Issue Eighty-three, October 2016

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Here Fishing, L. L. Madrid
“Now, from under the shade of a great pine, I watch Grandpa rummaging through his tackle box, sifting its contents with just his fingertips. Taking careful steps I approach, my hand clenched tight, encasing an old pocketknife.”

Jefferson Davis’s Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon: The Real Story, Brian Lillie
“One of the socks that were boiled was a green woolen number that Davis purchased during an absinthe-fueled debauch in New Orleans a few years before the War Between the States started to screw with his nightlife.”

The Salwar, Ramsha Siddiqui
“Razia, who was now no longer Razia, or a different kind of Razia, was nowhere to be found when her husband arrived.”

Double-Strength Demon Dogs, Robert Roman
“Fantastic Freddie was the only altar boy from the Red Brick Alley. He was always consecrating Ritz Crackers and trying to make us eat them like communion wafers. He light-fingered incense from the sacristy, and he blessed water from Old Lady Tully’s spigot and flicked it in our faces before we played Mutually Assured Destruction in the woods.

Cover art: Infanta, Stephen O’Donnell