UNCLASSIFIABLE
A 2019 Best Small Fictions Anthology inclusion
AUGUST 2018
ORBIT
JOE BAUMANN
~
Sheila is failing eleventh grade math because she cannot stop staring at Fergus McMillan’s blowhole. Okay, so she knows that the fibrous bulb of skin that juts out from the back of his neck isn’t really a blowhole—nothing ever spumes out or gets sucked in—but the hard flesh is folded over on itself in a grumpy scowl so it looks close enough to the real thing. She spends fourth period eyeballing it, counting the freckles along Fergus’s skin that surround the growth like witches crowding around a cauldron.
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AUGUST 2018
ORBIT
JOE BAUMANN
~
Sheila is failing eleventh grade math because she cannot stop staring at Fergus McMillan’s blowhole. Okay, so she knows that the fibrous bulb of skin that juts out from the back of his neck isn’t really a blowhole—nothing ever spumes out or gets sucked in—but the hard flesh is folded over on itself in a grumpy scowl so it looks close enough to the real thing. She spends fourth period eyeballing it, counting the freckles along Fergus’s skin that surround the growth like witches crowding around a cauldron.
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JUNE 2018
A BEAR, A WOLF, AND A COYOTE
CURT SALTZMAN
~
Bear sat on the stoop of the mobile home waiting for Wolf. Wolf generally moseyed down one of the gravelled trailer park lanes around this time, which was not even seven o'clock in the morning. Today was Saturday and the boys were out of school for the long summer break. But there wasn't much doing in the sector. They could sit on Bear's porch under the awning shooting the bull, or kick a ball around. The air-conditioned bowling alley in town, where a few pinball machines stood against one wall, didn't open till noon. The flat top mesa presented another possibility. Bear and Wolf usually ended up going there.
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A BEAR, A WOLF, AND A COYOTE
CURT SALTZMAN
~
Bear sat on the stoop of the mobile home waiting for Wolf. Wolf generally moseyed down one of the gravelled trailer park lanes around this time, which was not even seven o'clock in the morning. Today was Saturday and the boys were out of school for the long summer break. But there wasn't much doing in the sector. They could sit on Bear's porch under the awning shooting the bull, or kick a ball around. The air-conditioned bowling alley in town, where a few pinball machines stood against one wall, didn't open till noon. The flat top mesa presented another possibility. Bear and Wolf usually ended up going there.
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JANUARY 2018
THE TEXT OF MY FAVORITE STORY
LAURA ARCINIEGA
~
Dominic said, “You can find the Mariana Trench water column anytime. You can find the Mariana Trench water column that takes you to where you can smell the texture and hear the stripes only on Advent Sunday. I swam until I found it, then down through the marine snow for minutes or months or millennia—who knows? In the bathypelagic, a flabby whalefish came for me, angry over the name humans gave her, but she banged her face against the Advent water column like a neon tetra in an aquarium. By the time I reached lower midnight, my irises were bioluminescent enough that I could see the mile of ooze at the bottom of the okeanos. I’d swum 36,000 feet but when I spotted the Challenger Deep, I let myself float the rest of the way. It was like floating down to heaven.
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