PUBLISHED FICTION

By Kyle Ethan Valla -- Drip… Drip… Drip… The rain. It had made its way down to the fourth floor, near our homeroom. What was left was the natural element breaching our artificial world in the form of a waterfall flowing down a flight of stairs, with its perpetrator being the doors to the rooftop, opened slightly enough to allow the rainstorm outside to make its entrance. Looking down, observing my now soaked sneakers, the realization of what caused this slight flooding sl

By Sophia Leat -- Written with the intensity of the Russian dialect, interact with the uncertainty of a calf's first steps. What suit to follow remains unbeknownst to me, so I lean into the desire of feeling. I blink and blink and blink, though I cannot seem to rid my eyes of the remnants of my emergence — it has managed to remain unwavering ambiguity. My presence as uncomfortable and unavoidable as gastrointestinal issues — as a concave mirror my focal point remains undis

By Anisa Serrano -- Is freedom the pledge that was made long ago? Is it simply an ideal? Or is it a promise that was broken? Is freedom the feeling of looking out at the expansive ocean, realizing that the world is so big? Is freedom the savagery that they stripped away cultures from their country, yet historians will call them “heroes”? It could be anything! They said, You’re free here! It’s the act of speaking out, of making a choice, they said. We had this and nobody els

By Anisa Serrano -- For my Sister. Although we do not share a last name, we share a soul. Her name has always been Sister. Her name is and was never Melissa to me. I’ve never called her that (not seriously at least). She’s never been the older sister to tease and fight, she’s never been one to yell or scream. She’s just my sister. Yet nobody believes this fact. Not one soul who meets us believes that we are sisters. Nobody! It’s ridiculous, we do look a little different. Just

By Madison Nichols -- Chapter One Norma Anne Beaumont, age 27. I stared at the newspaper caption and into the eyes of the woman above them, wondering, as we all did, what had happened to her. She was cropped from a family photo, her blonde hair laid against her collarbones in perfect pin curls and she had a kind, familiar smile. Her dress was a beautiful shade of blue, though you couldn’t tell it from the black and white newspaper. I pulled my eyes away from her and out to t

By Albert Tanguilig -- INT. BUSAN HIGH RISE APARTMENT - NIGHT We hone in on a heavy oak door. Dull thuds echo. Thud It grows louder. More intense. Thud THUD Then... CRUNCH JINTAE splinters the door with his fireman's axe. He and his partner MINHO kick through it. Both are broad-shouldered, eyes filled with determination. They find themselves inside the threshold of a handsome high-rise apartment. They speak in Korean. JINTAE Take the next apartment over on the right! MINHO Y

By Wendy Mu -- In between the sea and the sand, today, was me. I gazed at the border of both letting the waves wash at my thoughts. It was a rocky, rough journey to get there. I’ve walked across tall hills, hard rock mounds, and mushy mud lands. The soft, peachy sand was a mark to a journey’s end long awaited – relief to a burden long held. A bellowing breeze blew at me sharing a rush of savory saltiness, like an tasty serving of garlic fries. The clear day’s sun massages my

By Joaquin Chavez -- “My name is Casey Lawrie. Take my hand. I am the Grim Reaper. One of many, to be exact, I am officially an Agent of Afterlife Services™, and my badge number is 9189. What I'm trying to say is, you're dead too. Hate to see the youth die young. At least I think you're young, maybe your skincare routine was great before you croaked. My job is to lead people through Limbo. I am not allowed to disclose what the afterlife is like, but I will say the lines are j

By Jehan zain Bano -- First time I saw you at the edge of the Golden gate bridge playing rocks in the ocean and moving her long fingers inside her blonde hair.She is hopping ,her hair loose in the wind ,smiling like a flutter,happy go lucky.The pain she is hiding within her is in the shadow of her smile took people in a nutshell.No pain no gain… A French muslim woman, Hana, 24 years old baking muffins ,taking out from hot oven flipping out in a tray putting mittens aside whil

By Andres Bellot -- The wall was engraved with seven vertical lines, and the man who stood before it reached into his cloak and grabbed his dagger to scratch in an eighth. While the grey linen shirt and black wool pants he wore underneath the cloak were obscured, they were the best pieces of attire he had to tackle the upcoming cold. Putting his dagger back into the leather holster attached to his belt, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a small blue jagged crystal.

By Noey B -- Click. I took the shot. Just came rolling uphill from Mt Pleasant High School. I went to the shopping center at White and Story back in December, yet my wheels treaded further towards Grand Century Mall. Go back an hour, I was getting flicks of residentials ‘cause the SAN JOSE TRIP required that nostalgia. Therefore I cruised through the East Side from Evergreen to Alum Rock. Land owners don’t mind the skies with satellites and three-hundred-sixty-degree cameras

By Noey B -- NOEY: After leaving [____] for a local event, I was scheduled to go to a different award ceremony only ten minutes away by car. I called my mom to ask for an Uber, but she was “busy” and my app wasn’t working at the time. So I thought, it’s only a few extra minutes, and I snagged the opportunity to capture street photography as I strolled by the Fairgrounds. N: The sidewalk pavement was filled with cracks and the buildings faded into grays. My eyes, offset by the

By Charisse Smith -- If you only knew how many times my life has been rewritten by someone else’s pen, you might understand why telling my own story matters so much to me. People often meet me and see only the present version of who I am—a woman who stands with strength and determination. What they cannot see are the chapters that came before. They cannot see the storms that shaped that strength or the silence that sometimes followed those storms. My story began when I was ve

By Ethan Le -- In a field dimly lit by floodlights, the community gathered to kill the cane toads, creatures branded invasive, disruptive, corruptive. Traps were set, aerosol sprays hissed, and each strike was celebrated as a victory for “balance,” as though justice itself were being pioneered in the wetlands. Hours into the marsh, the last toad was caught. Its final croak was drowned beneath the roar of applause. “We finally got it, that pest!” someone shouted. Ivy clapped

By Matthew Wherttam -- The morning after an oversized blizzard on Long Island, my brothers and I stuffed ourselves into our heaviest winter clothing and then tried and failed to open our front door, which was piled high with snow. And so was our back door. The windows on our first floor were frosted over, and upstairs, where we got our first good view of all of it, we found that the snow had arranged itself around our neighborhood in swells and dips and furrows and ridges. S