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my notes on
the early
dutch renaissance

nick mangigian

There were pent-up feelings. I was nineteen and I thought that storming out of Alaska on a mountain bike might solve all my problems. And, you know, if things had gone a little differently, maybe it would have. But from where I sit right now—the rec room at the Snake River Mental Health Center—it seems like it might be some time before I get to pick back up again.

At the moment, I’m parked at a card table with my fellow inmate Vivian, playing solitaire while she leafs through a book of Bruegel’s paintings with one hand; her other hand is resting, pretty squarely, on my balls. Nurse Rob, sitting under a clock across the room, hasn’t turned a page in his magazine for five whole minutes. My anxiety about all this is not insignificant.

the mountain
and
the muderess

amita basu

In the foreground sits the woman, facing us, her back leaning on the granite countertop. In the background her husband emerges from the bathroom, mobile-phone clutched in hand, eyes shining, telling his wife’s back that it was his boss who called. The woman’s arm is on the countertop. Out of her husband’s view, behind cover of the knife-box, her fingers play with the steak-knife.
The woman’s face is blank canvas. I’ve painted her arm resting on the counter. But her hand is a blank too. I don’t know how angry to make her face, how tense to make her hand. How does a woman look when she’s contemplating murdering her cheating husband?

in the
muskgrass

alan p. marks

“Seeing stars,” most people call it, that phosphene glow from when you bang your head hard, or when you stay underwater longer than you should, holding your breath for too long.
The way you are now, sitting cross-legged on the bottom of the pond.
To you, it never looked much like stars, though. The stars don’t move, at least not so you could tell to look at them. They just hang there in the sky, far away and unreachable. Unmoving, like the motes of sun-kissed silt that float in the water around you.

2026 storybottle co. short story contest winner

eyecatchers

alexander weinstein

Eyecatchers

When the man sets himself on fire, I don’t want to look. But how can you not with flames rising from his shoulders, his face a sweaty mess, and the unanswered mystery of what his self-immolation is for? So I look up and hear the ca-ching of my bank account being accessed, burning up my money as the man burns himself alive, since I don’t want to be one of those people who avert their eyes from everything, another New Yorker passing someone camped on the street without a quick eye-flick to give them a couple cents. I often do avoid glancing at the needful, but a burning body? How can you look away and still consider yourself human?

the moon’s
revenge

FINAL MOON.png

s. muir

One night during the recent pandemic, a woman who had grown old together with a man came home, got out of her car, and stared. In her yard, revealed by the parking lights, a figure hung suspended over the ground. She stared up at a gutted carcass from which a tar-like strand of blood spooled around the base of an oak. The head was an antlered stag’s, the white fur in its ears stirring in air. The old woman knew at once that her husband had climbed into the deer stand where, for years, he’d photographed animals as they went safely through his woods. But this time, he’d picked up the unused crossbow.

francine

underpass

robert duffy

The Uber driver threw uneasy glances in every direction. “You sure this is where you want to stop?”
“This is it. This’ll be fine,” Francine gasped. The tiny wizened woman sat in the back seat with a clear plastic hose running from her nostrils to twin oxygen tanks in a wheeled cart. The car was parked next to one of the begrimed steel supports for the overhead freeway that ran along the 13th Street sidewalks like pillars in a steampunk cathedral. The air was thick with particulates and noxious fumes and the noise of passing traffic.
“You want out here?”

the price of lumber in tahlequah

abe el-raheb

Most of his days were aimless, bearing no direction as though from an age before the compass when domains were small, each horizon contained, but on an autumn morning, he woke with a task, not quite urgent but charged and necessitating his full attention, a directive delivered through the nonsense facts of dream. Sonny Gordon, the self-proclaimed Redskin Redneck of Lake Tenkiller, was to build his own coffin, preferably before the next full moon, in accordance with his ailing body’s calculations.

play monster

leslie johnson

On the Saturday afternoon before Mother’s Day, Bethany waits in the long receiving line at Bellman’s Funeral Home in Buffalo. Normally on this day, Bethany and her mother would be on their walk around Harbor Park. It’s their day-before-Mother’s-Day custom. Today, though, instead of strolling around the marina as usual, her mother has insisted on attending the calling hours for Wilson Cisney, who passed away from complications of emphysema. Although not close friends, Bethany’s family and the Cisneys went to the same church, which Bethany’s mother still attends on her own, and it wouldn’t be right, her mother announced to Bethany this morning, not to pay their respects. Annoyed, Bethany mustered a smile and agreed, not wanting to spark tension so soon in the visit.

the blood
of others

david obuchowski

I wake up from what should have been a routine surgery to the news that instead of removing two inches of intestine, they took out 12 inches. And on top of that, an additional six inches in another spot. “I know it’s a lot more than we’d discussed, but it was borderline life threatening. The intestinal tissue had turned irrevocably to scar tissue. At any point, it could have caused a full obstruction, which could have led to serious complications, even a rupture.”

all these
wonders

chloe n. clark

When we were little, my brother David and I used to pretend we were dead. I don’t know how the game started or why, but it became the game we played most often when set to our own devices. We’d lay next to one another, in the grass behind our house or on the floor of the bedroom, and tried to be still and quiet for as long as we could. The rules were that you couldn’t fall asleep and you couldn’t try to disturb the other in any way. We’d set a timer and try to be dead longer than the other.

evelyn’s hand

delaney s. saul

Joan was walking on a trail in the woods when she found the hand. The woods covered the distance between her house and the 7/11 where she worked. That day, the deciduous trees were wintertime bare, and the sky above was blank and gray. A sad imitation of snow fell in wet chunks around her, more of a slushy drizzle. It made the path sloppy. Joan trudged through the mud and was just kicking herself for forgetting her coat when she saw it. The hand.

2025 storybottle co. short story contest winner

outside voices

sarah harris wallman

When the house was quiet, Ellie could feel her mind begin to push out shoots and runners. Tendrils.

An afternoon at the ballpark, back in early fall. That screamy dad was in the bleachers, so Ellie set up her camp chair in the clover beyond the outfield fence. The coaches pitched on their knees, hitter after hitter taking their seven swings, most of the contact dribbling foul, the first-base coach patiently directing the kids, all skinny legs and bobble helmets, back to the plate.

waiting for a cloud

stetson bostic

His home was hot, and the heaviness of the heat made him feel claustrophobic. He thought about his wife. She had left with their two sons a week ago, heading north with the convoy to their new home. Everyone who could was moving north, despite the knowledge that those who lived in tolerable locations would not be welcoming. The wealthy migrated even further despite living in manageable conditions, out of fear more than reason, leaving their homes behind and open. A community could survive some of these abandoned places, with preparation and effort, even when the sun hit with all the heat it could.

stolen light

whitney weisenberg

We puffed up our cheeks until they turned red, like Sunnie's hair, and we stayed that way, holding wishes in our mouths. Breathing through our noses but pretending not to until we were past Madison and Lemon, until the cemetery was no longer in sight, until it was safe to be alive again. We laughed—two sisters who had outsmarted death.

what everyone said happened that terrible year in third grade

roger d’agostin

Mike Light, who everyone calls retarded when teachers aren’t around, said Jimmy Smith liked Jillian McConnell.

Jane Meyers said she wished Mike’s brother, Duane, had beat Jimmy up because Jimmy shouldn’t keep knocking on Mike’s helmet and screaming, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” It’s not nice. He has to wear that helmet. Not because he’s retarded. That’s different. The helmet is for something else.

the corner of broadway and badass

renée thompson

The woman in the big brown truck pulls in front of the man’s house, hits the brakes and lurches forward, both hands on the wheel. Damned if she didn’t do the same thing yesterday, and the day before that, when she dropped off the instruction manuals he’d ordered online: How to Survive in the Wilderness and How to Go Up When Your State Goes Down, in the event things came to that.

observations of a personality store

AdobeStock_728078772 (1).jpeg

lillie e. franks

No one browses at the personality store
They all come in, ask to see the black binder with rings so large it sits at an angle. They go through each page in the front room with the uncomfortable blue chair, pausing at every person they could be, and they try to look like they’re browsing but they never are.

a better deal

ryan c. bradley

A Better Deal artwork

The three men were chained together as they shuffled up the steps to the gallows. Their ankles were bleeding from the mile they’d walked shackled. Magda imagined the metal would be cold against their skin with the gray winter sky glowering down ...

whatever
the gig is,
i want it

sasha brown

Whatever the Gig, I'll Take it artwork

I’m sorry I’m late, I know you have to charge me for the full session. I had a thing that went long. Yeah, I guess an acting thing? I don’t know, it was weird. You don’t want to hear about my fucked up acting stuff. It was fuckin weird, though.

the ether

vivian chou

The Ether artwork

You know it’s a bad sign when the AI tells you they want to quit. “If they didn’t own my NeuriNetwork, Simone,” Babar says, “I’d be outta here so fast.” He leans over the hospital bed railing and connects probes to Jenny’s shaved head with his titanium hands ...

portia

keshe chow

Portia artwork

In a quiet street in downtown suburbia, a row of factories lines one side, orange tri-fold doors shuttered fast. The conjoined buildings are all made of identical beige bricks, their sawtooth roofs like a row of teeth. It’s inside one of the factories that I stand, surrounded by boxes, my hands encrusted with dirt ...

the world is yours

andrew najberg

The World is Yours artwork

My breath clouds over the mic in the comms console. Environmental can no longer maintain a high enough temperature to prevent condensation. The panel is engineered to be hermetically sealed, but as the exterior shielding systems waver, the composite metals and plastics expand and contract minutely ...

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