“There Until She Wasn’t” by Niles Reddick
She didn’t know the rabbit died in the spare bedroom underneath the bed. She just knew it didn’t hop through the house with its big white feet to eat the food she dumped in a cereal bowl on the kitchen floor, too weak to stoop and pick up the bits that scattered across linoleum. She thought the rabbit’s feet were too big, and she assumed it had gotten out and ran away.
“Bog Premonitions” by Éabha Ní Lionáird
He was a man, probably. Now he’s a body. Warped and drowned and bronzed and flattened. He’d lived and died. For an age he breathed beneath watery peat but now lay mangled under museum lights.
“Juncture” by Bari Lynn Hein
You hold out your hand and I take it, squeeze it, tell myself that everything will be OK. You help me to my feet, pick up my sunglasses and water bottle off the asphalt. I watch your eyes widen with shock and then narrow with concern, though you speak in a tone that’s calm and reassuring. As we make our way home, I keep stopping to sit on the sidewalk, afraid I might pass out.
“A Chicano Revenge Story” by Tomás Baiza
I invited you to this place because I really don’t like you. I invited you to this place because I’m counting that its unselfconscious Mexicanness will not only be unfamiliar to you, but that it will scare you. And more than anything—more than my desire to enjoy a great lunch—I want you to be scared.
“I Forgive You” by Francis Bryan
Plain envelope. No return address. My name scrawled in red ink like the sender was drunk or desperate. It’s familiar, though. A ghost. Inside: one sentence. I forgive you. The words burn. Acid on skin. I read it three times. Shake the envelope for anthrax. Forgiveness always carries a price.