“Minotaurs” by Lane Talbot
Red police lights revolved beneath a spread of morning lightning. Two Kahota squad cars sat parked askew atop the rise in the middle of the …
The Metaworker Literary Magazine
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Red police lights revolved beneath a spread of morning lightning. Two Kahota squad cars sat parked askew atop the rise in the middle of the …
I In an old cafe on Frenchmen Street in The Faubourg Marigny, a ceiling fan churns, throwing dust into the eyes of an old painting …
Privacy. Who doesn’t want privacy? Even if you’ve sold off half your property to a persistent developer intending to put up twenty “McMansions” on it, …
Bob Sanders awoke one morning from a dream to discover that he no longer existed. He had died in the night. He had been fifty-eight …
1 It was a very bright hat. It was mostly black, but it was a very bright black. Same for the gold that spelled out …
It’s odd. I’ve never felt anything like it. I’ve been here for a very long time, as long as I can remember, as long as …
My self-destruct button pops up. It sits idle with flirt and temptation, just atop my ribs. Throbs with each perfectly pained thump of my heart. …
We arrived right on time, although we had debated that. Isn’t fashionably late, well, fashionable? In the end, though, we were on time. Which was …
In the Third Year of great burning, Mo Mo, the Golden Emperor, made a journey to the monastery in which, as a boy, he had …
When the dragon first wound its way through the fragrant mist that swallowed the mountain, most had no reckoning of its nature. It was a …
My finger banged on the tiny doorbell. I paced back and forth trying not to fall off the tiny step. Finally, the door slowly creaked …
Harvey Olsen never had any interest in surviving any kind of apocalypse — not zombie, not viral, and certainly not nuclear. He honestly did not …
James, as the doctors and staff at St. Mark’s Regional Hospital in San Diego insisted on calling him, applied pancake make-up over the band-aid camouflaging …
We are all doomed to lose everything. I’ve lost three fingers, one arm, one eye. I’ve lost my family, my childhood home, my native tongue. …
It was official: Angie Lash and Marco Di Luca, twenty-one years her senior, were wed.
When my ear fell off I first thought of the client delegation sitting at the conference room, waiting for the meeting to begin in earnest. …
You pause in the center of the footbridge, a silver-bright ribbon running beneath you, gravel paths serpentine under the locust trees that define the banks …
Morning, a hot wind blowing from the east sent the tall yellow prairie grass bowing in ripples toward the old house. Colin leaned against the …
The photos on the website of the Gold Ridge Inn showed a log structure with a wrap-around porch and a hitching post for the horses …
Sam Karrington’s size-six loafers kicked back and forth atop the wooden bench under the train stop awning. The train would be here soon, he thought—no …
I’ve fallen in love with all of them. How could I not? With their skin so soft I can watch it give way beneath my …
Honey’s Pub is loud with live music, and there’s a full pint of lager in front of me. If I drink it, it’ll be my …
I have stood for over a hundred years in this place, endured the idiots who link hands and try to encompass my bulk, observed the …
There is something sad about an unfrosted and forgotten about sheet cake — the kind of sheet cake when if finished would be eaten at …
One lost Saturday night, around the last rays of the summer that never was, Yoshimi and William-James, one of the finer couples in their little …
The darkness should be the first clue, like it was not just a memory but an encounter, both in past and present: of the future. …
Peg had made good on her resolution to leave West Virginia, and here he was in San Francisco, seasonless though it was Spring, sleeping on …
She shone bright in the headlights of Emerson’s car. White dress, white shoes, white ribbon in her hair. A very white little girl walking along …
Sure, no one ever said that people were getting their powers from the rain. Tommy guessed it had something to do with all those big …
The small pink tube is pressed into the palm of my right hand. I am flicking the lid with my thumb, finding satisfaction in the …
“How d’ya s’ppose we git outta this here situation?” “Well, the cars are over there.” “Sure are.” “That’s probably our best bet out of here.” …
It was the kind of bar that would have had to struggle up several rungs of the social ladder to be considered a dive. Not …
It wasn’t like that. Our mother suckled us for years in the rank, familiar den. She chewed the deer meat until it was a fine …
Then the Billado Block burned down, and I had nowhere to live. “Well, shit,” I said to the guy standing next to me watching it …
It was just beneath the nipple of her heaving right breast. “What’s that?” asked Bordelli. Clarice didn’t seem to hear him. She kept bucking her …
Having little to his name when he died, the reading of Henry Fromm’s will went quickly. Nothing surprising or contentious. On paper he never did …
I guess I never told you about Texas, long and sweet in the evening, boiling jelly, about mom’s temperature, stuck in the oven: The best …
6:47 AM The darkness turns gray; the misty fog rests over the water; the honeysuckle perfumes the air as white petals float on the still …
I knew already, struck with the phantasm of a dream that I had taken the reins of my life at last. Like a drowning man …
The air is thick with a bovine stench. We’re driving eight hundred miles through desert and oil fields to our new home on Dyess Air …
Entry Door Yes No Damage to exterior? X Interior? X [The lease says “no nails,” but upon her arrival in December it was …
It was the upper floor of a solid 1950s style house in Piraeus with heavy ceiling fans and dust-laden blinds obscuring a view of the …
We will not subside, for there can be no epiphany; we march into the sand for the egrets, hunting them with our knives. No other …
Come with me, it won’t be far; we have all night, and the seasons with it, in your heart: I’m dying. I’ll tell you about …
“Pickup for Angelo.” He leaned on the counter. “For who?” “Angelo.” He jerked his chin up—he had been told he mumbled. He had a deep …
In the heat of the summer, back when Willow’s mother slipped in and out of lunacy, sometimes she’d wake up at night to find her …
I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. But that was twenty hours ago, and now we’re here, at the party, and …
Her new boyfriend had a ship inside a bottle. You’d ask him how he got it in there, and he’d act like you …
D.M. Rice is a non-binary writer from Dallas, TX whose work has been featured in the Aletheia Journal, Sybil, The Bandit Zine, and the anthologies Rec*og*nize, …
It was late enough that she didn’t even feel tired anymore. Clarissa squinted so hard her eyes hurt. She tried see through the fogged-over windshield …
She’d had a cupcake for breakfast every day for the last month. Thick on the icing, more often than not with sprinkles, occasionally filled with …
Once there was a man who found a forest in his pocket. When he came home after a day’s work he would take it out. …
The peace inside the giant glass bell is almost always short-lived. Soon the translucent, riblike curves will spark with electric-blue orbs, followed by clouds of …
You come home, half gallon of milk in one hand, the other snaking around my waist. Head buried in my shoulder, no words, just small …
Once upon a time, there were two big kingdoms and two small kingdoms. The two big kingdoms were called Khakia and Doogland. The two small …
I was born a human jigsaw puzzle. I emerged from my mother’s womb, not as a whole baby, but in scattered pieces. The doctors worked …
Tsuki Amai’s wristwatch emitted a soft click, and she tugged gently at her ear to make sure, for the tenth time that day, that she …
It’s not smoggy like they say it is in London, at least I don’t think so, but the River Thames is filthier than I had …
They rode together in silence for some time, the old man and the young one. Paul looked out the window, his blue eyes cloudy with …
It’s autumn now. The leaves are carrying quiet dust on their surfaces. Northern winds puff and relieve your skin from the unforgiving sun. Soon there …
Every year, from the first I was assigned to the graveyard, I would watch the headstones from my place upon the highest pine tree. My …
Obsidian, black, but when held up to light it is semi-transparent. Also known as Apache Tears. Roughly circular in shape, about half an inch by …
Yesterday you were five foot ten and today your toes don’t touch the base of the bed. You cocoon yourself deeper into the blankets, stuffing …
I lost my heart last night. It must have happened in my sleep. I didn’t notice at first, but when I looked in the mirror …
Every morning I look in the mirror and hope for a different reflection. The problem with makeup is that it doesn’t cover every scar. And …
I hold the moon like a baby in my arms. If I let it go, it will fall. The light of the night will die. …
I opened my eyes, emerging from a dream but couldn’t remember anything at all. Shame really because I’d always considered dream space a bit like …
Wait until your mother and brother have left the house. Then, call him. Four oh eight, five five five, seven three eight oh. You’ve had …
To be man means to reach toward being God. Or, if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God. Jean-Paul Sartre …
Dude driving, dude driving vast expanses, dude fucking up on the GPS, dude asking for directions, dude getting off on the right off-ramp and hitting the ocean …
Hello, everyone! It’s Friday again and we’ve got another extra thing to share. When we were all talking, we realized we’ve all shared some of …
We at The Metaworker are excited to bring you something a little different this Friday. We’ve been given the opportunity to work with Impress Books, …
I don’t know how long we were up on that hillside, just Paul and me. We sat in a shallow trench, bundled up …
Tom Blethen faced two fifty foot rows of potatoes. He looked up at the December sky. It had rained, the field was all muddy, and it …
Sit up straight, feet flat, pen poised – ready? Now don’t think, just write what comes to mind. Don’t pick up your pen, just keep …
She wanders through the streets past midnight. They assume it’s too dangerous for her. It isn’t because anyone who would harm her is asleep. She, …
Last week in the park, a small, violent dog kept sniffing the ass of a much larger, more docile dog. The sniff was aggressive and strangely …
One girl bakes a hundred cupcakes and gives them away for free. One girl wastes perfectly good eggs on a car. One girl’s dog gets …
The needle pricks my skin and I gasp as I shake out my hand. A little speck of red blood lands on the grey flooring. …
Out by the creek behind our home, the moon and stars reflect off the water, and Bandile would often go out there. The trees were …
My room is black as an Olympic runner—except for the illuminated screen of my Sony Vaio which radiates like Chernobyl. My laptop is cherry red; …
She led me out of my house in the middle of the night. I went with her because she was moving away the next day, …