Fiction - iExile

Writing·Kakhaber Gagloshvili

Uproar in Diritania

From early that morning, the people of Diritania, a small country, had been waiting anxiously for the Defence Minister’s press conference to begin. Justin Catford had announced in advance that his statement would be of an emergency nature. The fear...

Writing·Melissa Chouinard-Jahant

Synchronization

Patrick Swayze dances a chassé across the screen. (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life sounds louder in the theater speakers than the rest of the movie. The audience hoots and hollers. Phoebe taps her feet to the song and...

Writing·Barbie Brown

The Golden Hour

Millie smelled the lake before she saw it through the trees. Something damp and almost peaty cut through the resinous smell of pine and spruce — a distant, olfactory memory of algae, earth after rain, and an aquarium. Then she...

Writing·Sherry

The Embroideress

Su Wannian’s embroidery frame stood by the window. The window faced north and admitted little sunlight throughout the year, but the northern light was even and gentle, just right for fine needlework. She had sat beneath that window for twelve...

Writing·zahra sheykhi

The Cherry Tree

I woke up this morning to the sound of birds rustling through the cherry tree’s branches. Sunlight was slipping through the thin curtains, dancing across my bed in soft, golden patches. I hadn’t even fully opened my eyes when I...

Writing·Nasser Pooyesh

Perhaps Deleting Will Prevent Repetition

Translated from the Persian by Nasser Pooyesh, with editorial consultation from Mojtaba Ahmadkhan “I fell.” She said it in a way that was at once a report, a complaint, and a request for help. Her nose was covered in blood....

Writing·Zahra Oveisi

Humanity Erased

I walked out of the publishing house into what felt like a robotic version of life. The vein on my forehead was still throbbing from what the publisher had said to me. I could not believe he had allowed himself...

Writing·Barys Paulau

The Currency of Love

The question came at the end, when the lights were already too hot and the microphone had begun to feel like an instrument of confession rather than a broadcast. What is it like to be a dependent woman? Diana held...

Writing·Rashmi Mishra

The Congested Seagull

It sprawled there motionless, outstretched to the maximum length possible. The seagull, five minutes earlier, had been in possession of food, chewed down to almost every morsel. But the scraps of offal torn from its destined meal, for which it...

Writing·Imogen Lorien Berry

Gilded Hour

Tic. Tok. The clock monotoned. A weight of dissonance hung over the stale-grey, metal office. Its stained-white walls drained any enthusiasm for life. A drained, desiring breath escaped a young woman’s once-adventurous, now-chapped lips. Her lustreless eyes drifted around the...

Writing·Pandel Collaros

Dark Sequence

This is a place of wondrous illusion, a vacuum unconscious of its own non-being. That is ridiculous. This existential dread thing is overdone, but there it is. A cliché that writes millions of benzodiazepine prescriptions every year. Bad benzos, but...

Writing·Alexey Nekrasov

The Station Keeper, 2094

Dear reader,
Before I begin this story, I should mention that the events described here took place roughly a year ago—in 2094,…
The decades leading up to these events witnessed an extraordinary surge in information technology. Humanity had…

Writing·Triya Chakravorty

Hunger

I am the tongue that falls from the open mouth. I am the devil at the dinner table. Peel back her skin and you will find me. – I didn’t think I’d end up here. Thirty-two. Overworked. Unmarried. A constant...

Writing·George Bede

No Other

Felix Horace remembered the first time he received the offer letter. The Agency had insisted every recruit memorize five categories of anomalous phenomena: supernatural, biological, philosophical, theological, and phantasmagoric entities. But as long as it paid, he hadn’t cared. His...

Writing·Henri Moss