Avery Garcia

“Johnathan” by Avery Garcia

Trigger Warning: Mentions of substance abuse, child abuse, and gun violence. “Just try again, Johnathan,” I said softly, shifting my weight to the other foot as his brow crinkled. Those black, mousy eyes flit over the page quickly but his tongue remained bolted in his mouth. He writhed in his chair, eliciting a cackle of loose change from within his ratty hoodie. I watched his tiny hands thumb them through his pocket. Several months ago, I would have demanded that he turn any such distractions over. I was still in my disciplinary phase then...

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“Ravenous” by Avery Garcia

It’s a wonder he hasn’t tried to kiss me yet, Larine thought as she gazed up at the black holes boring down upon her. In those dark bottomless wells that were her host’s eyes, she felt the whole of the world staring back at her, a look both derisive and flattering as it permeated her being. Like a knife, she felt his gaze jab at her repeatedly, holding the excruciating masked charge of storm clouds in the distance, sudden and striking. Even as she felt the pains claw their way up her abdomen, threatening to tear out her heart and to stain he...

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“Iudex” by Avery Garcia

Trigger Warning: Implications of Sexual Violence “We didn’t know what we were doing.” The boy stands beneath my bench, pitiless and yet pitiful. He stares up at me with quaking eyes deep as wells, his hazel irises like muddy water in their depths. “Well then, son, let us hope that you do now.” The old floorboards creak to a stop as the boy’s feet cease to shake, his whole body rigid and cold like the wooden planks beneath him. They might as well be the boards to his coffin.  From up here, I can see it all descend upon him, that f...

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“Every Day A Little Death; or Are You Still Coming” by Avery Garcia

Are you still coming? The words flash a few times on the telescreen, leaving their squirming green imprint on my eyelids once I turn away. Heading to the kitchen, I ruminate on the message, reading it over and over again as the chip downloads it to the digital cesspool of meeting notifications and invoices that my hippocampus has become. Are you still coming? I can almost hear her saying it, the slight melody of the lilt in her voice branded in my mind as I turn on the faucet, watching the water spill out in a perfect, crystal-clear wave, t...

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“Care Less” by Avery Garcia

Submitted to Contest #103

My blood was already on the tip, a crimson tide washing over what was once white, bleak, innocuous. He would know now; he would have to know now, lest he always kept blood on the edges of his Polaroids. Stupid, goddamn stupid. Careless.Letting the cool of my tongue extinguish the small flame of the cut, I stared at the photo, the plastic portrait of a plastic girl. Thick, glossy lips like Crayola crayons. Ombre nails that might as well be guitar chips. Looked like she reeked of l'Oreal. Obvious bottle blonde. Everything pretty about her prob...

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“Lioness” by Avery Garcia

Submitted to Contest #100

“Always forgive your enemies-nothing annoys them so much.” -Oscar WildeSo it came down to this. Her foot itched where the barb wire had sliced it clean open. Though it couldn’t exactly be called “clean” anymore. The rusted walls of the warehouse roared back her own curses as she shifted the bandage slightly, careful not to let the dust, singed and intersped with fulgurite glass, grate into the smarting wound. For a moment, looking back to the rat poison on the rotting shelf, she almost thought such a discovery to be some divine mer...

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“Sophocles, Sleet, and Serendipity” by Avery Garcia

Submitted to Contest #77

The automobile that had hit Fern was still in the same spot it had been in for the last six months, a hulking, crippled beast with rusty mange and spiderweb scars cracked into its once-ferocious eyes. Still and scabbed, it sat, not quite slumbering among the other steel skeletons and burnt-out frames but rather caught in a cold, glassy state of pension. I could just barely make it out from behind the green quilt of pine trees at the end of the wheat field. Marcus always had the better eye for it. Fern always used to talk about the magic of ...

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