I can still see his smile as I settle into my desk and the normal morning wave shuffles in. First comes the pinstripe…
Fiction
New Fiction by Michael White: “Eid Mubarak, Merry Christmas”
My eagerness propelled me up the airplane steps. Eleven years to the day. Well, technically eleven years and a day. W…
New Fiction by L.W. Smolen: “Dirty-Rotten”
Where mom and dad and me used to live in the Haight, from the brush in the empty lot across his street, with a BB gun…
New Fiction from Mike McLaughlin: “For the Truth is Always Awake”
Krieger’s father left Salzburg late in life. He had never married and had no close family to speak of. After th…
New Fiction from Kena Ramirez Dillon and Francisco Martinezcuello: “Veterans Motorcyle Manual”
2022 Veterans Motorcycle Manual…
New Fiction from Peter Obourn: “Wild Horses”
Lee Harkness was supposed to meet this guy Smitty at a bar called Marty’s on 14th Street at a specified time. Lee was…
New Fiction from M.C. Armstrong: Excerpt from Novel ‘American Delphi’
Note: M.C. Armstrong’s new novel, ‘American Delphi,’ will be out October 15, 2022 from Milspeak Boo…
New Fiction from Andria Williams: “The Attachment Division”
The Bureau for the Mitigation of Human Anxiety They were the survivors, they should have been happy, they should have…
New Fiction from Eddie Freeman: “Gideon’s Thesis”
Gideon, a senior majoring in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz, fidgeted nervously. He wanted to…
New Fiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Viraj”
Viraj sat in a room behind the motel reception counter, eating a bowl of bhaat with his fingers when the desk bell ch…
New Fiction from Cameron Manning: “Glory Chasers”
May 3, 2009 After Captain Short returned from his training with the Australians, he scheduled himself to take leave t…
New Fiction from John P. Palmer: “Lasting Impacts”
Johnny felt the oak floor tilt sharply below him. He had no idea what was happening or why, and he was frightened. Th…
New Fiction from Colin Raunig: “What Happened in Vegas”
Since getting back from deployment, Frank had gone soft. He was still a massive block of muscle, but the edges had ro…
New Fiction from Benjamin Inks: “Jack Fleming Lives!”
Okay—let me set the record straight. It started as a bunch of rumors first, before we lost control of it. But it real…
New Fiction from Nancy Stroer: “Move Out”
I drum the steering wheel of the rental car with the flats of my palms. It’s the opening riff of a song by Yaz. It ta…
New Fiction from Terry Sanville: “The Metallic Sound of Rain”
Just about every afternoon the wind came up suddenly, stirring the dust that blew through the screens of our company’…
New Fiction from Brian Barry Turner: “Death Takes a Temporary Duty Assignment”
Death had narrowed his search of potential candidates down to two soldiers, both with high kill counts. Qualified app…
New Fiction from J.G.P. MacAdam: “A Sleeping Peace”
Author’s note: I arrived at this story after reading an article in Rolling Stone called ‘Highway to Hell:…
New Fiction from Steve Kiernan: “War Ensemble”
Holding Dick Cheney’s shotgun is not exactly how I thought I’d be spending my time when I joined the Marines. It was …
New Fiction from Jillian Danback-McGhan: “Allied”
I met the Lieutenant at a diplomatic reception at our embassy. Carrying papers which issued weaponry to his nation’s …
New Fiction from Amar Benchikha: “Flight”
CONTENT WARNING: A hate crime against an Arab-American is committed in the story. Being an Arab-American myself, the …
New Fiction from Jim Speese: “The Darkness”
Sometimes these things happen. You wake from a deep sleep, whether a short afternoon nap or a long night’s slumber, a…
New Fiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Love Engagement”
Noor and his wife Damsa moved to Paris when the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Twenty-two years later, after t…
New Fiction from Hadeel Salameh: “Everything Will Be Okay”
1. Her Friend the Israeli (Eli) Mais got a phone call from her parents in the occupied territories of the West Bank. …
New Fiction from John Milas: “Burning the Dragon”
Stautner wasn’t my friend anymore. He didn’t get promoted with the rest of us on the first of the month. Now a fire b…
New Fiction from Moe Hashemi: “Javid”
We buried Javid on a gloomy Friday morning in late December, shortly before Ali was gassed on the battlefront. All th…
New Fiction from Damion Meyer: “Reverse Process”
Five days ago at morning PT, Nate wasn’t in formation. Everyone assumed he was at sick call, and we did our workout w…
New Fiction from Adam Straus: “ANA Checkpoint”
Sergeant Reiss insisted on giving a full patrol order every time we left the wire. I thought it was overkill, …
New Flash Fiction from Mary Doyle: “Triple X”
It’s zero-three hundred and I’m yanked out of a sleep so deep I wake thrashing and fighting like a marlin at the end …
New Flash Fiction from Mason Boyles: “Parched”
The hermit lived in the water tower with an alligator, both of them long-gone paler than moon. Their eyes gemmed the …
New Flash Fiction from Drew Pham: “On Their Lips, the Name of God”
This is the memory that stays with him as his blood abandons the body and life fades—this, the one comfort that will …
New Flash Fiction from Elise Ochoa: “Desert Crossing”
If you’ve never seen a desert, I mean, a real desert, you’d think the sand looks like murky brown water r…
New Fiction from Mike McLaughlin: “What Could They Take from Him?”
After four months of not getting shot, not stepping on a mine, not taking a fragment to the neck or through the eye, …
New Fiction from David P. Ervin: “Currents”
Grant crouched on the sandstone and leaned on his fishing pole. The sun warmed his shoulders as he stared through the…
New Fiction from Logan Hoffman-Smith: “Hunger”
There were sixteen of us before the storm hit: truants and runaways and young offenders, girls in insulated yellow sn…
New Fiction from David Blome: “Bodies”
On a bright December morning, the lieutenant told me the news. An insurgent group in Latifiyah had executed about twe…
New Fiction from Susan Taylor Chehak: “With a Whimper”
This isn’t the first time that man has visited this cemetery, and he supposes it isn’t going to be the last. As a chi…
New Fiction from Gregory Johnsen: “Odds Are”
1. Heads Years later, long after the bodies had been pieced back together, after they’d been bagged and buried, after…
New Fiction from Kyle Seibel: “Lovebirds”
So Senior Reyes, the new night shift sup. I see him and the new airman walking around the hangar bay. Just talking. H…
New Fiction: Three Flash Fiction Pieces from William Alton
Three Pieces of Flash Fiction Things That Stood Out There was a boy in Izard. A brave boy. Everyone knew him. Ricky D…
New Fiction from Adrian Bonenberger: “Wonder Woman”
In Atlanta at the Ritz Carlton we stopped at the bar by the lobby on our way upstairs. Fred saw Newt Gingrich who was…
New Fiction from Matt Gallagher: “The Biggest Little City”
“Been to Las Vegas? Clean. Corporate. Sleek, serious suit. We’re that guy’s kid brother selling Adderall in the parki…
Soldier
An homage to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (The New Yorker, June 1978). Wake up at oh-my-god-o’clock on …
New Fiction from Matthew Cricchio: “War All the Time”
The Staff Sergeant shifted in his tight, class-A uniform and frowned. Phones rang and keyboards, the primary weapon o…
New Fiction from Henry Kronk: “We Found Out”
“What do you think?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “Could be an ambush.” “Could be.” “But here? The corps…
New Fiction from Lisa Erin Sanchez: “Signatures of Ghosts”
He had one scar when I met him, a single blow to the back of his neck in the soft fleshy space between head gear and …
New Fiction from Brian Van Reet: “Lazarus”
We were the HMDs: the human mine detectors. In a sense the job was easy, but impossible to do well. There was no good…
Novel Excerpt: Elliot Ackerman’s ‘Red Dress in Black and White’
That evening, at half past nine To William, the question of his mother is clear. The question of his father is more c…
The Gift of Trey
A nuclear reactor is nothing more than a glorified water heater. Sailors as young as nineteen, kids, bombard uranium …
The Witch
These days they call me by name: Hope. By “they,” I mean the people in our small dusty town, Masaka, where everyone k…