Michael Horton

January 2026 | fiction

Ping Pong

The house was a gift—picture perfect weekend luxury on the lake. From their three daughters. They were all doing well, money wasn’t a hurdle, and they wanted to show their parents a good time.

Just relax.

Sit on the dock.

Hold hands, the oldest adds.

They’d become concerned.

In the cathedral-ceiling living room, the fireplace rose in a striking arrangement of natural stone. An island as big as a pickup truck filled the kitchen. Everything was fully stocked. He looks for the coffee maker. She checks for milk. Next a master suite with glass doors to a private deck, the bathroom crowd-sized with walk-in shower, tub with jets, warming towel bars, a heated floor. Upstairs a second-floor balcony overlooks the living room and out to the glittering lake through the two-story window wall. They pause to look without speaking. They stand several inches apart.

More bedrooms, bathrooms, balconies overlooking the lake. Every piece of furniture was hand-crafted, surfaces polished to a finish like clear water. A dream house from some dream life.

* * *

The ping pong table in the walkout basement brings them to a standstill.

She rests her fingers on the scuffed green top. Do you remember?

He crosses to the table. Two paddles with blue rubber-nibbed faces rest on opposite ends of the table, the ball tucked under the nearest.

You used to win, he says, picking up the paddle.

Only at first.

He smiles, shakes his head, remembering. He picks up the paddle wagging it back and forth.

She circles the table. The panorama of the lake is framed in glass doors behind her. She picks up the other paddle.

Lovely hands. Even now, he thinks she has lovely hands.

He picks up the ball, hollow, feeling fragile as a blown egg.

Shall we give it a try?

Now she smiles.

I don’t know if I can—it’s been too long.

He laughs. Very carefully he taps the ball to her. She catches it in her hand and holds it a moment, staring down at it. Then taps it back with equal care. He moves to return it. It goes over his paddle and bounces across the floor.

A little rusty, he says, returning to his side. She moves slightly, shifting foot to foot.

Ready?

As though tapping glass, he serves. Stepping sideways she taps it back. His smile broadens. This time his paddle finds the ball, returns it.

It’s a moment of triumph. Look what they have done! She returns it.

The sound takes on a natural tick tock rhythm.

They focus on keeping the rhythm, the mutual cadence of pass and return. They concentrate, hitting the ball so it is an easy pass for the other to return. Some go wide, and they step quickly reaching out. It is coming back to them.

Serious now, both smiling, almost holding their breath.

It has been so long. So much has come between.

They concentrate.

They keep it going.

Michael Horton

Michael has worked as a bookmobile librarian, McDonald’s shift manager, factory worker in a rubber parts plant, prep cook, men’s dormitory janitor, purchasing agent, and IT guy—but writing is what he does. His work has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and Raleigh Review, among others. Stories were nominated for “Best of the Net” and Pushcart Prize. He is an alumnus of the Sewanee Writers Conference, where he learned from the remarkable Tony Earley and Alice McDermott.

Jamey Hecht

January 2026 | fiction

Perv Circus

The annual Perv Circus celebrated its first decade with a huge bash at the Grand Palace Hotel. Nobody could have brought it off with more panache or bigger profits than Charlie Pinkhaus, known to his entourage as “The Founder.” Charlie knew hundreds of the right sort of people for his Circus: men and women who were loaded with liquid cash; troubled enough to need nearly constant stimulation; and unlikely to blow the whistle on the dark shenanigans he orchestrated, every June, within the private chambers of his own hotel chain’s flagship location. The Grand Palace Hotel was a maze of dark walnut panels twenty-two feet high. Most of the walls were crowded with canvasses, photographs in frames, textiles, tiles, and objects somebody had insisted were art, so they were.

Senators and bankers, writers and high fashion people, actors and sex workers—every sort from every part of the world eventually hit the Perv Circus. One night drew two astronomers and a veterinarian. And lonesome Charlie’s favorite: a recently civilized barbarian.

Jamey Hecht

Jamey Hecht, PhD, PsyD, LMFT, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Brooklyn, NY. His two poetry books to date are Limousine, Midnight Blue: Fifty Frames from the Zapruder Film (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Dodo Feathers: Poems 1989-2019 (IPB, 2019). His other three books are about Plato, Sophocles, and Homer. Hecht’s poems, fiction, and scholarship have appeared in two dozen periodicals, including American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, Massachusetts Review, Arion, Rattle, The Pinch, English Literary History, The 16th Century Journal, American Imago, and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. jameyhechtauthor.com

Kimm Brockett Stammen

January 2026 | fiction

Waves

The ship wasn’t rocking, still there was a sensation of lilting movement,

of repeated unbalancing and rebalancing,

as she leaned over the railing and reached out to the waves far below.

The instant before he approached, she felt that someone would approach.

He, on the other hand, as he said later, barely knew what was happening, before, during or after.

Their spouses were generally the planners.

Like all their vacations, her husband and his wife had arranged the cruise.

Their spouses didn’t plan this.

The four of them met at horse shoes on the second day, and since then had done much together: dined on huge Scampi, explored overrun harbor towns, laughed sparsely at a comedy show. A continent separated the two couples, but attitude and circumstance made them compatible, and also, as is always the case with compatibility: values. They believed in love and loyalty, and had thought the two as complementary as sea and sky, past and future.  On each of their monogamies depended entire infrastructures of children, families, careers, houses, investments, vacations, pets, landscapings, plans.

“Beautiful,” he said as he leant next to her against the railing.

And she knew he meant the evening and the ocean,

the breeze and the sensation of floating far from the tethering land—

but she also knew, or hoped, or knew what was meant by her hoping, that he meant her.

They fell in love.

They fell in love and they loved.

They fell in love and they loved and there seemed to be no choice at all.

Is there ever?

Ten years later, in a hotel in a midwestern city, where they could each stop over occasionally on the way to elsewhere, they were naked together. Even as memory, their nakedness always stunned: a green flash of recognition at sunset or sunrise; a breech from ocean sleep; a perpetual instant of waking.  They talked over once and again all their inevitable subjects: commitment, hopelessness, incongruence, boat-rocking. How their infrastructures—teens and young adults, aging parents, retirements, downsizings, dividends, vacations, small mounds interspersed in their landscapes, more plans—continued, and yet they two who supported those infrastructures were infinitely different. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they been these people all along, these awful people, and had just needed each other to learn it.

“It’s time,” she said, and he knew before she said it that she would say it.

She, on the other hand, barely knew what she was saying.

Still, they took other cruises, there were other lilting sensations, sometimes they reached out, or remembered reaching out, or sensed that they would—unbalancing and rebalanced—reach out from their opposite sides of the continent, to the waves.

Kimm Brockett Stammen

Kimm Brockett Stammen’s story collection, In a Country Whose Language I Have Never Mastered, was a finalist for the Iron Horse Book Contest and the 2022 Eludia Award. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Chautauqua, december, CARVE, Pembroke, Prime Number, and over thirty other literary magazines, and her work has been nominated for Pushcart, Best Short Fiction, and Best Microfiction anthologies. She holds an MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Creative and Professional Writing at Spalding University. kimmbrockettstammen.wordpress.com

Robert Miner

January 2026 | fiction

The general’s family selects an earth spirit for his mausoleum

Tang Dynasty, China

 May I say you bring great honor to the artisans of our studio by seeking our earth spirits for the general’s tomb?

The widow, sitting on a stone bench with her two sons, nodded solemnly at the ceramic workshop director.

The general is much admired as a fierce defender of the empire. The story of how he led the charge of his outnumbered troops against the rebel army will be passed down from generation to generation. Who can help but be thrilled by the way he urged his steed forward alone against the enemy line, slashing his way through stunned warriors, straight for the opposing general? One must marvel at his audacity and his courage as he vanquished the enemy’s leader, chopped off his head, tied it to his horse’s mane and rode along the front lines, terrifying the enemy and rallying his men to a bloody and glorious victory.

The widow turned pale. The older son gave a slight cough.

My apologies. Of course, you would prefer in this time to remember the general as the loving and devoted father and husband I am sure he was when not on the battlefield.

The widow stared down at her feet.

May I show you a few examples of earth spirits created by our artisans? Our grave-quelling spirits stand guard at the entrances of the tombs of hundreds of the honored dead, the first choice of emperors and noblemen. As you can see, our statues are finished with tri-colored Sancai glaze and come in many designs to ward off malevolent spirts. Our earth spirits combine the features of numerous animals into a figure to inspire fear in any enemy – tiger fangs, eagle talons, dragon tails. A warrior like the general with a lifetime of heroic deeds must have left many enemies defeated and broken. I fear their spirits could seek revenge in the afterlife. We must prevent these spirits from disturbing the peace of

the general so he will be a source of blessing and good fortune to what we all wish to be many generations of descendants.

The two sons nodded vigorously.

When selecting a design, it is important to remember our figures do more than protect against malevolent spirits getting in – they also prevent the spirit of the departed from getting out.

The widow drew a sharp breath.

Keep in mind that each of us has two souls. The soul that embodies our intellect, our spiritual self, ascends into the heavens. Our other soul, the one that animates our bodies, fuels our emotions, drives our earthly desires, stays with the body. Our earth spirits are crafted to keep these souls from leaving their tombs and walking the earth, re-visiting where they once lived and drawing near those with whom their lives intertwined.

The younger son and the widow looked at each other with alarm.

May I presume to suggest you consider our strongest and most fearsome figure? It is a little more costly, but it is the most powerful of all our earth spirits. I believe it befits a man of the general’s character and reputation. It has three horns growing from its head, the snout and fangs of a boar, and muscular arms and legs that end in deadly claws. A venomous snake encircles its arm. And, its entire body is engulfed in flames. The final touch is that it stands astride the body of a defeated monster subdued by its powers. I believe such an earth spirit will quell any disturbance and allow the general to sleep in the peace he deserves and for which you pray.

The older son leaned forward. Yes, our family will take two of those.

Robert Miner

Robert Miner is a Houston-based writer. He is a former political consultant who works in government affairs on energy policy. Follow him @robertminerpoetry on Instagram.