Did you miss me? I was with Benjamin, see, and Foucault, Fannon, Bhabba, Crane, Hinojosa, and Trumbo, and together we spent our evenings uncovering privilege, panopticons, and simulacras. I reveled in these until my skin went from brown to green and I realized I could drop the mask and dance the mambo good. Now I shuffle for the masses until they forget about skin and focus on my kickass Dancing-With-the-Stars moves.

Watch out for my pirouette, now. Might just be good enough to make the whole world dance.

– And then she grasps with an unpleasant jolt of consciousness like licking the posts of a nine-volt battery, which she did once on a whim when she was ten, that she has never pushed herself to do anything, not a single solitary goddamn thing. – Jess Glass in Requited

– He no longer resembled her lover. The room, with the shades drawn, appeared to be cast out of the depths of Dante’s hell and the walls breathed a combination of flesh and metal like a living Giger painting. The floor moved like liquid lava. – Alec Bryan in PANK

– Aaron’s mother’s voice is demanding, too loud. It pricks at Ann’s eardrums, making her want to dig them out with a sharpened spork. And is she really asking her this? Too hot heat creeps up her neck and across her cheeks. Margie apparently wants to know if Ann’s screwing her son regularly. – Nicole Wolverton in Black Heart Magazine

– But, no, I’m not too religious though I do have a beautiful plastic replica of the Virgin of Guadalupe standing about four feet high in my backyard by my fig tree and to the left of my enclosed Jacuzzi. No Mexican can get through life without the Virgin even if he’s an atheist, agnostic or a born again Buddhist. La Virgen. Dark like los indios of Mexico. – Daniel Olivas in La Bloga

– It is 00.51 and I have kept the light on. It is 00.51 and I have kept the light on and I feel sick because I have eaten too much. – J.D.A. Winslow in Fleeting

While these stories are nowhere near as big as Spengler’s Twinkie, they’re just as profound. Enjoy.

– The wail of my firstborn crescendos through the house from two rooms away. I set the fishbowl I’m holding back on the kitchen counter, and the betta inside it gives me a baleful look. Irie’s water is filthy, and he depends on me to clean it. Although he’s just a fish, I definitely sense an attitude when his needs go ignored. — Rhonda Gill in Amarillo Bay

– Oh, you played the part so well, with downcast eyes, but inside, you planned your move—and it was bold—to entice my unsuspecting heart into your trap. You pretended to understand, to have what no man can have: a noble purpose, a pure heart. As you know by now, you made me believe I was special. — Melody Chan in SN Review

– In high school, I loved a boy who shaved his head with a hunting blade. We drove around our river village in his jeep, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and listening to metal or folk music, depending on his mood. Sometimes, he kissed me at every stop sign; sometimes, he clenched his face in fierce concentration, the focus of which I never knew. If I asked, he grunted or said, “Fuck off,” and was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. — Katy Resch in Painted Bride Quarterly

– She considered it a moment more, suddenly wary that she wasn’t drawing the blank she expected. Holy shit. That? That stupid thing in the Connor Building where she had sat bare-chested, talking to some jerk in a lab coat and afterwards filling out questionnaires? Could someone want to know about that? — Dennis Kaplan in Eclectica

– Diane, I remember after that really bad break-up of mine—the kind that doesn’t seem so long ago but is?—you were the one who pulled me out of my hall closet where I tried to hide from the pain, me there alone with the broom and the dustpan. — Jody Madala in Anderbo

“I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”  — Leslie Marmon Silko

– At the beach, Rosa looks out as far as she can. The world, she thinks. Her father brings the pail and shovel from the car. They sit scooping sand into the pail, filling it. Rosa’s hands are small, have so much to hold. – Eric Beeny in elimae

– Mrs Blythe believed in ‘deep down’. For example she knew ‘deep down’ that cats do not suffocate babies in the night while the house sleeps but she still got rid of Mable when her first child was born. She also knew ‘deep down’ that her children were not going to save themselves until their wedding nights but this did not mean boyfriends or girlfriends were permitted to spend the night. — Mira Mattar in The Literateur

– I hate that my name is not Darryl. I hate sleeping in the same bed with another person. I hate that I can’t keep a straight face or a hard pecker during the Cop ‘N Whore role-playing game my wife likes to play. I hate that I go two weeks without drinking anything but Coke. — Chris Okum in Fictionaut

– Even if you were able to put together in your mind, out of whatever images and ideals constitute your lifetime’s experience, a picture of several of the most beautiful people in the world—no, the most beautiful people, male and female, who’ve ever existed, or not even existed yet because they were so improbably, impossibly beautiful—they wouldn’t match up to these three. — Alvin Greenberg in Wag’s Revue

– Stacie was in her late 20’s, had kids, meth mouth, a thick braid of poorly dyed red hair, and God only knew what else. She was a half-way house person too, but had moved up to Fairfield after she got released. — Sara Gerot in A Bad Penny Review

We get that he acted like a dick, Mark, but come on, man! He’s the Commander-in-Chief for God’s sake! Anyways, we heard about the suspension, so here are a few yarns to keep you occupied. Next time, remember: don’t ever rely on seven-second delays. Unlike these stories, those will always let you down.

– I swiveled in the other direction and took in the immense sectionals. I’d walked past them to get here. They loomed larger than my living space, and all had women’s names affixed to them: Lola, Thelma, Jenna, Lily, Stella, Simone, Catherine, Scarlet. None of them had my name. — Emily Schultz in At Length

– Lala’s on her phone, arguing with her mom in Korean. I’m in the passenger seat, breaking up bud on an Abnormal Psychology textbook, a class I think Lala flunked out of. — Lacey Martinez in Pitbull Magazine

– Chicanos, he says, gangs, Norteños. I kind of just zone-out listening to him. Maybe he’s right, but I’m worried he’s going to say something really messed up and the people around the bar will hear it and think I’m with him. I get the bartender’s attention. Same girl from the other day. — David Como in THIS Literary Magazine

– A talking woman was on the screen but they couldn’t hear what she was saying because Delores had turned the sound down. The woman’s hair was like a bubble that encased her head, with a large curl exactly in the center of her forehead. — Allen Kopp in /One/

– Blinded by headlight filaments, smell wet heat beating off motor, see driver open-eyed through windscreen condensation. Tyrespray soaks clothes; shutting it out and turning away, prepare your bones. Unbearable roar, and here it comes, now, the death blow, now! now… — Allen Gillespie in The Waterhouse Review

– Her mouth hung open for a second. Why was I telling her what to do? The housekeeper? You walked fresh from your shower into the kitchen, a towel around your waist. She waited for you to speak up for her. You said nothing. – Stephanie Dickinson in Blue Lotus Review

– In his bunk that first night, it was as if God were pressing a finger through the middle of Sammy Krupnik’s chest. Somebody was going to drown this summer at Bible Camp. He shivered all night listening to the breathing of strange boys. The next morning he cornered the younger of the two counselors. The young counselor was everything the boys weren’t but wanted to be—sixteen, good-looking, and having sex with his girlfriend back home. – Wyatt Bonikowski in Smokelong Quarterly

– And so there we all were in the cabin, Bruce among us now. He breathed heavily and took off his orange flannel shirt to wipe his sweat. Burly. Big-armed. Good curl to his beard. Deep voice. Like a man in a gun catalog. – Christian Moody in The Collagist

– Evan was a radiologist. He used his x-ray vision to determine that my heart was the size of a hazelnut and just as hard. We dated for six weeks before he told me that I was nutty in other ways as well. My kisses, he said, left a bitter taste in his mouth. – Ruth Schiffmann in Staccato Fiction

– The French guillotine was a cleaver they lifted with a rope and let fall like a window sash. What killed you was just gravity, in a way nobody’s fault, even the razor edge of the heavy blade just some sharp thing that happened to drop. – Nels Hanson in White Whale Review

No need to worry. He’s learned his lesson. He sent us these via email without any attachments and, shit, you know what, they’re pretty good! Eat ‘em up.

– When I have nightmares I dream about cold, colorless moths and my mouth sewn shut with red thread. – Lindsay Anderson in Unsaid

– There were three other couples present, all decked in ballroom duds, waiting to begin the beguine. I was wearing a black t-shirt, parachute pants (in case I ever figured out how to bail out of this body), and built-to-order sneakers, and, like every week, the others stole glances and shifted nervously, tried not to stare, thanked God for their small feet and wasp waists. – Kellie Wells in Super Arrow

– “It’s purer that way — zip zap: carrots, apples, tomatoes, barley, tobacco, cattle, genetics: poof! corn. Pure magic. Every day whole sections of states just disappear like ice breaking away from the shelf — into a trapdoor beneath the stage. It’s mesmerizing, but there is no trapdoor, and maybe no stage. You see? When the saw goes through the body, that’s a real cut. No blood, though, only husks. All this and the corn once grown by the Inca and Mayans no longer even exists, slowly replaced by the corn we know today. Where does it really go? A bottomless agricultural top-hat with no rabbits — magic!” – Dolan Morgan in Conte

– Me and Gin play Lips. This a game where you see how long you can touch lips before you need to scream. Gin always the one screaming first, I guess not always, sometimes I scream first cause I don’t want to seem like no weird lips lover. – Lindsay Hunter in Barrelhouse

– Stepping away from the photo board, Dean takes a deep breath, aware of his heart beating heavily, like the girls’ long jump rope thwacking the cement breezeway at Dry River Elementary during recess—the urgent, rhythmic sound of it. The girls all in a line waiting their turn to run in. Dean used to hide behind the water fountain and catcall, trying to make them miss a beat and stumble. – Leslie Johnson in Colorado Review

No long, drawn-out intro today. Just five tickets (that’s right, Eddie, not two) to paradise. Enjoy.

– He starts slurping on the big toe of the right foot; the left foot finished. She feels his tongue, a big, wet slippery eel, wrap around and tug; lick, lap, like her toe’s a snow cone. She thinks about this. A snow cone would be refreshing in this heat. Take her mind off the slobbering man kneeling below her. – Jules Archer in PANK

– Penny had a thing for bus drivers. Each morning as she dropped her quarters into the metal box, hearing that click-slide, her heart flittered soft, then hard. She loved their strongly spread feet, their hands circling the life-sized steering wheel. These were men she trusted. – G.L. Grey in Bluestem Magazine

– First it was one game winner takes all and then it became two out of three. Next he said even the world series is best four of seven. He keeps track in his little yellow spiral notebook but I only get to see the cover. I find it hard to believe that I’m always, well mostly always winning, and yet, after all these years I haven’t been declared the better gin player. – Paul Beckman in The Scruffy Dog Review

– Thirty minutes just to prepare Mrs. McAllister for her weekly shower. Ten to help her out of the bed and out of her housedress, ten more to help her down the hallway to the bathroom, and a final ten to get her situated on her shower seat. Today was the day to bathe her and Winsome could find no way of getting out of it. – Amina Gautier in Torch

– I can smell it. Only faintly since they’re pumped full of plastic, but there’s the unmistakable smell of a body. Of death. Behind the bodies, the walls are white. One of those non-rooms used for everything from symphonies to makeshift morgue. It’s empty except for me and this older girl. Which is good. I hope I look passably normal, but I feel weird and bloated. My hands, my guts, my thoughts. I should leave, but I don’t. – Celena Hill in Conte

Random examples, which in part represent the canon of Camp[ing]:

* “End-of-the-World” billboards
* Alex Jones’ Infowars
* The wife’s picadillo plate
* Eschatological sex

While we would agree that No. 4 is as as good a way to end it all as any, we give you the stories below to keep you entertained. At least until the next prediction, that is…

– You tell them how she blew it up fairly recently when she spoke of a new desired vacation, inflated it early for the next trip, but how you two never deflated it. You know, when they seem to pity you as you tell them these things, the caretakers, that they realize as you finally did, some sooner than others, that this job, the job of you, has been easy for a reason. It’s not a sick old incapable man job, as Glen told the agency. No, Glen lied. He works, but you are special to him. – Heather Fowler in Used Furniture Review

– This would be so much easier if either one of us could find someone else as awesome as either of us, I say. I am half undressed on the bed. Or maybe I am half dressed. It’s hard to remember which. Yeah, you say. Good luck with that. You are standing near the window. You are putting a shirt on or taking it off. You are so far away. You are the closest you’ve been in months. – Elizabeth Ellen in Barrelhouse

– He had them on. The lucky underwear. The boxers Val wore the night he predicted Kansas would take the NCAA Championship and won $1,567. The night before he met Jessica. – Deborah Prum in Imitation Fruit

– Gold buttons on a military coat. Anna Wintour approved. Boots: good ones, hammered leather, almost to the knee, laced in the front, black. Stockings with no runs, barely visible below a red skirt. Saks was three blocks away. Laura Ashley was out of business. Our style betrays us. – W.F. Lantry in THIS Literary Magazine

– The gauze, constricting, shrouds his hands. He would that they would meet, moving beyond the lifeless clasp which whitens the knuckles. No amount of false tears can melt his yearnings to his words, which fall in a litany of useless entreaties. He repeats phrases, runs down lists, enumerates names to eat time away, but the clock ticks baroquely on the inert invocations, as his eyebrow twitches to its every movement. Time progresses, with God but slowly. He sweats with anxiety and steels himself for death whilst his life is robbed. His precious moments simper on, but he is girt only for abasement. – Erik Knutsen in Eunoia Review

Mornings are reserved for simian stoops over toilet seats, treadmill agonies, and what the daughter calls “ugly eggs.” Afternoons, we run in sweat to catch the breathing man before his underwater dance. Evenings we sleep, barely, and in sparse dreams with jovial lips we spring on the parapets of icy flames, just for a taste. But even the daily grind will not consume us. We will endure, like the stories below. Enjoy.

– As soon as I moved my pawn, Grandpa countered with the Sicilian Defense. The old man remembered after so many years: four draws and twenty two losses—my record against the Sicilian. I’d kept score in a recycled notebook, now buried somewhere in my garage. If we counted our rapid transit games, I’d beaten the defense twice, but Grandpa had always called those matches “practice.” – Dariel Suarez in Sliver of Stone Magazine

– But this, it suddenly occurs to me, is the real face of war. It’s not the college football star who heroically foregoes a multimillion dollar contract to proudly serve his country and it’s not the valiant leader landing on a battleship to a raucous ovation. That stuff is just team-building mixed in with entertainment. No, the real face of war is two complete strangers feeling immense pain in a grimy, third-rate truck rental office. It’s women who don’t want to lose a son or grandson to a stranger whose mother or grandmother wants exactly the same thing. And beside them is the rest of us, standing around and feeling helpless. – Thomas Sullivan in Unlikely 2.0

– A severed hand is quite popular, it seems, but all the fuss over me is going to stop if I lose my head. No one wants to know you then. Like Geezer—he was an average sort of bloke, until the day he and his team were trapped underground for 26 days. He was the sole survivor. The pillars were mined too thin and the roof collapsed. Now he walks around with sticks in his hair, talking to himself. – Gill Schierhout in Bellevue Literary Review

– Lurching my stomach on top of the ball, rolling over, back and forth, until there is nothing keeping me from jumping on top and running down the street like a circus performer. Make it a little easier for the cartels to target me. They’ll get us all sooner or later anyway. God bless America for consuming drugs like Hoover vacuums. – Matthew Dexter in SOL: English Writing in Mexico

– When she stopped screaming we kicked the bitch out into the goddamn desert. The winds had picked up, and out there on the plains the temperatures had dropped to an inhospitable level; only those with shelter would avoid perishing. – Seth Seppala in decomP

Sock ‘em. Fry ‘em. Slap ‘em. Tap ‘em. Nick ‘em. Taste ‘em. Taunt ‘em. Share ‘em. Lick ‘em. Bake ‘em. Serve ‘em. Stain ‘em. Do-whatever-you-want-with ‘em. But not before reading ‘em. After that, after they’ve claimed your soul, do as you wish. Go ahead and try. The stories will never let you go. Hasta pronto, amigos.

– Also, I had always thought Germans didn’t know God. I grew up hating them because of the stories mother told me about Hitler and how he slaughtered six million Jews, God’s own people. They have churches here though but they are mostly orthodox. You know they say we Igbos are descendants of Abraham. That’s why we are so wise and prosperous. – Samuel Oluwatosin Kolawole in Sentinel Literary Quarterly

– “So you don’t know what you’re talking about?” At some point she realized that Test Guy was delivering his barbs staring directly into her nipples. It was as if he had come from a planet where eye-to-nipple contact was the established norm. The unbridled rudeness of it so shocked her that she initially questioned what she was seeing. Or maybe it was something about her: were her nipples blinking, had they sprouted thorns? And then she realized: oh, this was the experiment. From that point forward, it seemed no big deal. But now, at three in the morning, still trying to process her surfing, with the cool office air grazing her skin, and her thin nightgown offering scant protection, it was palpably giving her the creeps. – Dennis Kaplan in Eclectica

– Enter the mystery character: a retired cop with the hard-to-die habit of cruising town with an old patrol scanner. That is how one afternoon he left his living room and flew, fought for our futures with a steady one and two and three and rhythm. He bolted that premature tunnel shut. – Deanna Larsen in kill author

– The other night during sex Dylan said, “Oh my God,” in a way that was not necessarily good, and I just kept thinking oh no oh no until he said finally, “The cat is watching us.” I looked up and saw her in the corner, waving her forelegs around in the air. I told him that we should just ignore her, maybe let her figure things out on her own. But he freaked out and went home, and the next day my cell phone rang while I was writing at a coffee shop and I felt like I should apologize for my cat. “She does that sometimes,” I said to Dylan. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” – Richard Larson in pax americana

– Sure, I’m into Carverquest. I admit that. I mean I keep out of the wank circles and I don’t really post on comms much. I’ve just been in fandom for fucking ever, so everyone knows me and knows my Journal. Nick’s Diner, they call it. All the greasy, bad-for-you Carverquest content you never knew you wanted until it’s served with a steaming hot cup of sarcasm. People tell me stuff. It’s awesome. – Sam Starbuck in Fiction Circus