Category: WTP spotlight: fiction

From WTP Vol. VI #5 Dark as a Dungeon in the Heart By A.C. Koch For a number she had never forgotten, Margie Finn was having a hard time hitting all the right buttons. It was the White Pages that was throwing her off, following along with her finger on the page as she poked…

From WTP Vol. VI #5 It’s the Real Thing By Lynne Viti My father’s tavern sat on the corner of North Kresson and Fairmount Avenue, though Fairmount was no avenue. It was a wide cinder stub of a road,  flanked by the Halls family’s gritty brown house and  across the street, the tavern,  last in…

From WTP Vol. VI #4 Jesus in the Form of a Goat By Eric J. Smith QuikStop wall clock says 9:23. I ask Dolores for the bathroom key, and she hands it over without saying nothing about paying customers. I walk across the lot. Someone pulls in for gas, taking the turn heavy. Nearly hits…

From WTP Vol. VI #4 Jedediah Arkansaugh By Vincent Mannings Jedediah Arkansaugh was by now an old and irascible man no longer in possession of wealth. His grandfathers had been cattle ranchers and bear-hunters, his father a superior-court judge, and his mother a silent woman who’d rarely smiled but one day mustered a smirk when…

From WTP Vol. VI #3 O.G. By JS Khan Olivia Goldblatt sulks, frowning at her reflection in the glass: her ghostly double trapped in the windowpanes conjured by the dawn’s pale glow: how she haunts herself these sleepless mornings. Swiveling in her wheelchair, she scowls at the rec-room of the Orange Grove Retirement Home as…

From WTP Vol. VI #2 A Different Kind of Heart Attack By Elle Napolitano 2017 Honorable Mention for the Literary Enda knew the Hy-Vee like the back of her hand and she maneuvered her cart purposefully up and down the aisles. It was summer, a withering hot August, and she only wanted to get in…

From WTP Vol. VI #2 Pinky Swear By Mike Stewart My writings are different. I pinky swear it. I will talk of many things, but here will limit my discussion to only two—uniqueness and bees. I am unique. This is a source of pride to me—false pride. You see, you are also unique. We are…

From WTP Vol VI #1 The Dying Kind By Lynn Lipinski 2017 Honorable Mention for the Literary Sheila arrived at Mrs. Harper’s house in midtown Tulsa around four in the afternoon, nodding her head violently to eighties-era punk rock by a band called Agent Orange blasting out of the car’s one working speaker. She parked…

From WTP Vol. VI #1 Wabi-Sabi By Cal Setar I want to write a story. Maybe… Yes… Yes. I want to write a story. I want to write a story about a guy and a girl who meet under, let’s say, difficult circumstances. Maybe it’s a menial job, or a less than ideal living situation—a…

From Vol. VI #1 People are Naturally Attracted to You By Tanya Perkins The grandfather died and the children were called home, children who were not children anymore but adults with stomachs and mortgages. They had no parents, never did. The grandfather had overseen childhood: parkas, homework, Easter eggs, summer camps, college trips. After supper,…

Third Place for the Literary Drive-by By Henry Plunkett  See all the winners in the 2017 Special Winners Edition So, I get in from work, banjaxed, and kick off the boots. Like any hallway, we’ve a row of coat hooks and a shoe rack, but that’s where the normality ends. In the kitchen, Rita is…

 Second Place for the Literary Let Me Take Your Hands By Kris Faatz  See all the winners in the 2017 Special Winners Edition On the summer night when the police took his housekeeper Consuelo away, Antonio Guerrera felt helpless for many reasons. One was that he himself had paid Consuelo’s wages in cash for years,…