Jill Summers

“Biflo” at Litro UK

“Take a look under her hood, go on I dare you,” Todd Mason says, his tiny ponytail sticking to the sweat on his neck. The carport shields them from the brutal Florida sun, but amplifies the humidity, trapping the heat from the engine of the car between them and baking their skin from the inside out…”

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“Bro” at Knee-Jerk

“When I look at him, my uterus hurts, a dark pain that starts in the middle of my abdomen and travels like a shudder to everywhere else. I think about his birth and when I remember his head, covered in hair, black and matted and oily like Vaseline, emerging from between my legs, I imagine hands, large and god-like, cupping it like a misshapen ball and lobbing it back in…”

“Stuck Landing” at Paper Darts

“Jeremy and I are twins but not the creepy kind. And we have red hair but, and you are just going to have to trust me on this, not the upsetting kind. We’re identical and I think Jeremy looks a lot younger, but Dad said we came out side by side, both of us at the exact same time, whistling Dixie. When Jeremy asked if he was serious, Dad smacked him on the forehead and told him no one wanted to hear which one of us was forty-five goddamn seconds older than the other.”

“Squids” at Monkey Bicycle

“Sarah is 3 years older than I am, but she eats like a total child. When she laughs, chunks of food shoot out of her mouth and once even out of her nose. She sits hunched over her tray, which is Garfield, and totally ridiculous. I try to sit up straight, which is hard on an overstuffed couch. I try to look dignified, which is difficult, considering my own Holly Hobby tray. Mom and dad eat on placemats, sit on actual chairs.“

“Hotel” at Make Magazine

“At the top of a dark and heavily weeded hill there is a house that looks, no matter the weather or tilt of the sun, more like the shadow of a house than one made of planks and trim. It is covered like aging skin with crows feet, and frown lines connect creaking shutters, to leaking downspouts, to cracked and crumbling chimney pots. All around it, from its cellar doors to its silhouetted gables, have grown up creeping charlie and chickweed, and herbs and ivy eclipse the light of less enterprising buds and stifle the planned Victorian greenery of long ago…“

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“Cohabitation” short story collection

“At this point Sylvester was sure it was a boil. Until four days ago, whether or not it might be a goiter was up for debate, but the particular pulsing and hotness he now felt on his neck (about five inches below his left ear) practically screamed, “lance me,” and it was with a twinge of morbid excitement that he searched through his rusty tool chest for a utility knife and hopefully, though not necessarily, a pack of new blades…”

“All of No Man’s Land is Ours” at Gaper Block

“Joseph Consolatti finished his coffee, folded his napkin, and checked the bill that had been pressed unceremoniously underneath his breakfast plate. It was the third awful, really awful, thing that he had seen that day. The first was the WGN morning news, with their gratuitous overuse of the word “prostate.” The second was his brother Sylvester clipping his toenails over a teacup.”

“Paint by Numbers” at Untoward

“What we found on the other side of the door, my faith prohibits me from describing in plain words. My father, God rest his soul, should block his ears in heaven, should I try to convey to you, despite my Catholic sensibilities, the perverse display presented in your painting, the shameless pagan naturism of man in the most engorged depravity. I cannot even begin to describe to you the glut of body, the excess of skin. Rather, I am enclosing some photographs. I think you will agree the finished product depicts a very different Spaniel than the one on your box…”

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“Everything Seen & Unseen” at DeComp

“He does not like sweets, but the cylindrical shape of the churro, the powdered and crispy tube that now floats in his head recalls the similar shape though relatively smooth physique of the hot dog, which is his favorite non-food, eaten without caloric retribution, a food of the Gods, which satiates while leaving appetite enough to enjoy both the wanting and the consummation of the next meal. John T. Nangle thinks about hot dogs and decides he will buy one and eat it…”