M. David Hornbuckle The interior design of the cabin on the lake has not been updated since the early 1970s or maybe earlier. The carpet is orange shag, and the furniture in the living room is yellow vinyl. Taxidermied creatures inhabit many corners, stare out from every wall, and augment countertops. Ryan and Gabriella are in a bedroom, one of three. Their friend Keener, whose parents own this place, is in another, and Gabriella’s sister...

Stephanie Elliott “Mama!” her baby cries as she begins readying them both for the bus ride. “Shhh, Wendy, princess,” she soothes the baby with coos and talk. “It’s cold out. We must dress warm. So the snake won’t bite!” With a yellow blanket, the mother swaddles the little form into an almost unrecognizable rigid mass, then covers herself with her own coat, picks up her baby and throws a top blanket over them both, bonding...

Colin Fleming It was not that Tanyon Shotter was absolutely certain that he would not see his wife Keara again, but that did seem to be the unspoken agreement between them as she gave him a cold peck on the cheek in the early Holy Saturday sunshine of her parents’ Wellesley driveway. It reminded him of that episode of The Brady Bunch where the boys leave a trail of popcorn so that they don’t get lost in a Hawaiian forest, only to end up...

Fresh off his publication in "The Best American Short Stories 2011," the award-winning author discusses John Cheever, New York City, and the search for truth.

Jascha Kessler Six months in Los Angeles, and I’m still alone in my place. But not too depressed. No longer mourning the loss. Ready for the present, perhaps, if not my future. Let well enough alone. If it’s well. If it’s enough. I sit at a good though monotonous job at Technetronics, Inc., assembling micro-components for the guidance system of what must be the latest model cruise missile. I have the feeling I have come to the wrong...

J.S. Simmons The ad in the back of the paper claimed she was twenty-three. As she climbed the stairs and smiled, chin lifted toward the landing, Jack saw the lines in her face, the gray strands at the crown of her head where roots showed beneath the bleach job. He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter but the best he could do was recognize that one got what he paid for, one hundred-twenty-five dollars. She wasn’t fat. She had a...

Patricia O’Donnell Four young women make their way through groups of people on spread-out towels and blankets. This is the third day of unusually warm weather for June in Maine, and the beach is crowded. They find a spot close to the water, near the line where the sand is wet, and shake out their beach towels. One woman sits cross-legged on her towel in a flowered sundress. Blond hair wisps out from under a floppy straw hat. ...

Ashleigh Eisinger Jessie stands before me, a circus mirror image of the woman I married ten years earlier. Slight and shriveled, the sight of her furthers my longing for the plump blonde that used to laugh with me, that same woman who would not hesitate to shear off her top and slacks before crawling into bed with me on a Saturday afternoon, would let me stroke her skin until we could take it no longer and gave in to all of our desires —...

Alan Drew PART 4 OF 4 Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here Read Part 3 Here “Everything all right, Sarah?” Roberta yelled out from her desk as she passed in the hallway. It was the next morning. Sarah thought she might be able to slip by again, not have to speak to her until lunch time, but Roberta must have been waiting. She stopped, leaned against the doorway to Roberta’s classroom and blew out a deep breath. “You usually say...

M. Molly Backes, author of the forthcoming The Princesses of Iowa and the Assistant Director of StoryStudio Chicago wrote a phenomenal blog post recently on how to be a writer and, since that’s not complicated enough, how to be the parent of a young writer. An excerpt: Let her fail. Let her write pages and pages of painful poetry and terrible prose. Let her write painfully bad fan fiction. Don’t freak out when she shows you stories...