Editor’s Note

It’s spooky season, and what’s scarier than living an isolated life and dying alone with no one to remember you. What I mean to say is that this is the time of year I find myself itching for something: cold weather, a backyard campfire, hot apple cider donuts, the end of genocide, the continuation of democracy—however flawed. What I mean is that this is a season of longing.

After all, we’re all longing for something. Some human connection? A sense of community in the vast chasm of experience? It’s what Vonnegut advised to do with characters, make them want something, even just a glass of water. Well, this issue is full of characters and longings. You may find yourself hungering for a nice pasta dinner with someone (or anyone), for a renewed connection or a severed one, for someone to pull you up from your knees and see through to your cracking core, for someone to love you anyway. These writers have arrived to keep you company through the coming cold. They’ve brought you the nostalgic and surreal, the heartbreaking and oddball, the discomforting and lovely.

It’s a strange thing, reading about someone else’s loneliness. It feels oddly like making a connection, like being together. So grab a blanket, scratch that itch, and explore some pieces you didn’t know you were longing for.

Table of Contents

Title	Genre	Writer
To the girl on the rusted bike loitering in the Beer Barn parking lot outside my bedroom window	Poetry	E.C. Gannon
Substitute	Flash CNF	Eryn Sunnolia
Kutta (dog)	Poetry	Ashish Singh
Good Examples for Bad Students	Flash Fiction	Avra Margariti
Troll Shots	Flash Fiction	Will Musgrove
Cracks in the Ceiling	Flash CNF	Colleen Ellis
To Make Tracks	Flash Fiction	Lindsey James
Connections	Interactive	Vast Editors