Recommended Reading From Online Magazines

I’m speaking to the Dopamine in your brain: you want some good fiction. You want some mind-fucking, synapse popping, caffeine-induced, sleep-deprived, better-than-sex (well, sort of) flurry of letters and sounds and phrases that will set your myelinated axon ass on fire, make you drip-drip-drip down, and stick it to your Master, and make him wipe his ass with all those prominent East Coast mags the next time they come in, so Master realizes the best of today’s fiction ain’t nowhere near there.

I know you’re up for it, Mr. D. You’ve been waiting all week for more.

Mmm, the rush…

– Robert Paul Moreira

– The baby was hideous. I don’t know how to begin to describe how ugly this baby was. It deserved its own charity or telethon. In certain parts of the world, they’d drown it like a kitten the second it slopped out of the womb. The spawn of witchcraft or a deal with the devil. — Thomas Cooper in Smokelong Quarterly

– I’m watching Lindsey and Mom in the kitchen. They’re sitting at the breakfast table, eating what they’ve decided to call “the last supper,” even though it’s 10 AM, and neither has yet to even brush their teeth. Lindsey is in her jeans from Dior, Mom in that sweater that Grandpa Joe gave her for Christmas. It’s happening like this, a .22 revolver between them, and all I can think is that it’s July and Mom is wearing cashmere. She stabs her fork into a mound of pasta, spins until the semolina threads have worked into a knot, raises it to her mouth and gently places the swollen lump onto her tongue. Her eyes close. Grinning, she begins to chew. The pasta gets washed down with a sip of the most expensive wine Gristedes carries: red, Chilean, what she’s just described as orgasmic. She raises the glass to Lindsey who’s curled over a bowl of rice pudding. As a baby, she loved the stuff. Still does. Timing it carefully, Lindsey takes a bite, then covers her mouth, unable to keep from laughing, trying to keep from spitting all over the good china. — Josh Howatt in White Whale Review

– The delivery man left an oblong box, as tall as a man, two feet deep, on the front porch. Mart tried to lift the ungainly package alone, but couldn’t get purchase, so he went back up the stairs and knocked on the door of the apartment closest to his. — Curtis VanDonkelaar in Moon Milk Review

– She’s drunk. And I’m drunk. We are coordinated in our drunks. I suspect she is drunker. I suspect she is a drunk. I suspect a lot of things about her. I suspect her of sins. Omissions mostly. But if we weigh her sins and my sins which will win? — S. Craig Renfroe in Knee-Jerk

– Leslie sits cross-legged on a rickety wooden dock at daybreak, snorkel and mask on her lap, waiting for her research team to arrive. After navigating the morning market — crowded with vendor carts and rainbow pyramids of hairy eggplants, dragon-striped melons, and papayas — and passing through its humid, curry-scented morning haze, she’s hungry. Oh, to have another shot at yesterday’s Christmas dinner, spicy Thai noodles with shrimp and red chilies. The usual gauzy shroud of international travel had mucked up her senses so that she hadn’t appreciated the meal at the time, but now her jet-lagged stomach reminds her that it’s dinnertime in Norfolk, Virginia. And Christmas there, still. — Mary Akers in Literary Mama