Because It’s All We Can Afford by Austin James Hatch © 2021 Austin James Hatch ===== Austin is a Wonderland Award finalist author of obscure and uncomfortable fiction/poetry.

Outside the Café  Siamak Vossoughi                            They were in a café across the street, and so they had a view of the whole thing. The drunk fellow came out of the bar, and when he saw the red-haired woman, he smiled and opened his arms as if he knew her. It was five-thirty on…

The Alcove Robert Froese Lately he has been seeing faces where he knows there are no faces—in a pile of dead leaves, a laundry basket, a crumpled piece of paper, a cloud. Virtually anywhere. Sometimes the faces seem to stare back at him, sometimes not. And he has grown restless, doubtful in his thinking, suspicious…

The Cinnamon Mother and Other Stories by James Warner You wrote to ask me about some folktales transcribed by the Silesian forest inspector Hertwig Oppeln. This trove of zaubermärchen was issued in a privately printed collection, a copy of which I found in a university library. Oppeln began transcribing these stories in the 1840s in…

Miranda by Noah Kingfisher Her sleeplessness was a small rental cottage in a town by the sea.  Weeks went by in which she did not dream.    She wore a large hat and sunglasses that kept the bruises on her face in the shadows.   The sun did not set. Children played in the sand outside…