Glimmer Train Stories, #100

Literary short stories by established and emerging writers.

Tim Raymond
Come Running
"Oh, that little blue blanket from the plane! I've never seen those in real life. Out and about. You know what I mean."

Zehra Nabi
Cowkiller
The banker was driving down Sir Syed Road when a cow ran across the street. The banker killed the cow. Cowkiller, cowkiller, cowkiller, the five surviving cows thought as they stood at the side of the road.

Matthew Lansburgh
Enormous in the Moonlight
Sometimes patients who don't see their children for a long time think they've simply died. It's a way of coping.

Mark Fishman
Songwad Road
I didn't see what I thought I saw, a little reassurance, or maybe I did, joking with himself, Khamsing putting a roselle and tamarind candy, Kra Jiab Daeng, in his mouth, no more cigarettes, and he knew that what he'd seen had really happened.

Angela So
The Water in Our Hearts Has Fallen
He'll think about walking across the street and knocking on the door and speaking to their mother, offering his condolences, but he will shrink and his goodness will fail him.

Toby Wallis
The Sudden End of Everything
I have no idea what a bivouac is, but I don't say so. I just make a little ah noise, trying to sound interested but noncommittal.

Erin Rose Belair
Rare Items from the Universe
Everyone was tired from the seventies and seemed to be settling down. We rented a one-bedroom bungalow, the floors a milk-white tile.

Karen Malley
Fragile
She's thinking about something, Doug remarked to himself, and I'm thinking about something, and what I'm thinking about has nothing to do with what she's thinking about. In their minds, he thought, people are always pretty far away from each other.

Julia Phillips
Nadia
Back there, in that village they'd left behind, like a child trapped in a stone playpen, was Chegga. His garbage palace of a rental house where they'd spent the last three years.

Nicholas Clemente
Eugene
It was hard for us to stay put. I don't know what it was. What it was with the world, what it was with us.

Polly Rosenwaike
Ten Warning Signs of Postpartum Depression
Today, while the baby watched with half-closed eyes in his bouncy seat, like you were some kind of dreary show, you read. Syria. Afghanistan. International terrorism. U.S. gun violence. Alzheimer's. PTSD. The world still out there, still going down in flames and hanging on.

Doug Crandell
Manhood in the Veal Barns of the Hoosier Tundra
"Listen," said Perry, leaning by the sink, "you've got to get used to the way they raise livestock here."

Kirstin Valdez Quade
Interview by Jeremiah Chamberlin
When I was a kid, we moved to Salt Lake City. My family was Catholic and also atheist. We were both.