latest fiction
The Spectacle
Reece parked in front of the store, which read Squadrito and Son's in rusty neon across the façade. He'd bought the place after the old man died, but never bothered to change the name. At least once a day, someone walked in, "You Squadrito?"
Pat and Mike
Pat walked into the specialist's office with a worried mind. Just last week, in for his yearly check-up with Feingold, he'd been given a clean bill of health. So why had this other doctor's secretary called to set up an appointment?
The Floor Champion of Foosball
"And you, I love you!" the prom queen said to Sylvia, who sat quietly, never looking up from the television. Sylvia was watching "The Price is Right" and she didn't like to be disturbed. Every now and again, she'd yell out, "Four hundred and fifty-one dollars, idiot number two! Goddamn you, you're losing, loser!" but mostly, she just sat slack-jawed until one of the nurses came by to give her another plate of mush or a cup of pills. I heard she was in for trying to stab her mom, which was probably true. With all the side effects and lawsuits, they hardly gave anyone Thorazine anymore, but they handed them to Sylvia like jellybeans on Easter.
Mammals
Ben Sobel tests cosmetic products on small, restrained mammals for a living. He puts makeup in their eyes and records how long it takes to destroy the corneas. He shaves them and applies nail polish to skin. He puts hand lotion into orifices. This is a real thing he does, for money. The money is good; he will soon be free of med school debt. Ben is a young man, healthy but not happy. A lot of people don't know that rabbits, like humans, scream.
Motor Repair
As the sun falls behind the trees across the lake, Dave and his wife Tanya and Bob D. and his wife sit in lawn chairs, the husbands drinking non-alcoholic Sharp's beers and the wives drinking Miller Lites, and they're looking at the glassy, calm lake when Bob says, "Can you hear that?"
Dinosaur House
I make it to the Julianne's Mom's old mosquitoed house in the dead part of the night, half past midnight, crickets and neighbors' televisions masking what could have been silence a hundred years earlier, back when there was no TV and the crickets stayed on the other side of downtown.
As I Lay Wired
I was the Drew Barrymore of the science project. I rose up quickly, winning my first science fair in 3rd grade by constructing a flawless Pascal Vase and then again the next year for making a gyroscopic hard-boiled egg using the properties of friction and slippage.
Dumb Lumbering Beasts
Three men stood statue-like in an isolated corner of the otherwise bustling loft, gazing in mock adoration and secret scorn at the outlandish clay sculpture blocking their view of the rooftops, church steeples and crumbling smokestacks of Ohio City.
An Evening on Peaceful Quiet Street
The hawkers' cries herald the beginning or the winding down of any given day here. Now it's half past five o'clock p.m., and the sound of their sonorous voices as they walk up and down Peaceful Quiet Street stretches into its forte.
Interpellation Made Simple
The question she didn't mind, because questions, especially polite ones, are innocent enough. No, what Charette Cadet took offense to was his use of vous.
Frank Bollinger Day
I gathered after five interviews that John was a people magnet and his personal habits were impeccable, but not one person could give me a definitive, sexual-harassment or work-not-up-to-par kind of reason for his being let go.
The Sleeping Shags
It was sometime during the summer that Billy and Patty realized their father was finally going crazy, and that there was nothing they could do about it.
New Amsterdam
The last show of Kevin’s tour is in a small club north of Canal Street. The owner doesn’t like indie rock, but Kevin and the manager went to school together and she offered him a spot, a welcome-home show. The place is packed with friends and as many of his regular fans as could fit in the door.
Without Biting the Fruit of Knowledge
Adam, the First Man, sat on Eve's floor in a pair of blue briefs. "Hold this for me."
best of 2006
Thread
This unknown man can be seen in probably the most dramatic scenes of heroism ever captured on film.
A Hard Truth About Waste Management
The family liked so much to flush their trash down the toilet that they sold their TV and used the money to buy three chairs to arrange in their upstairs bathroom.
Amphibian
Dad's presence had shed a sort of good light on everything, but with him gone we could all see each other better: My brother was good and deserved a lot, my mother was weak and needed care, and I was not a good person.
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- Identity Theory publishes fiction from new and up-and-coming writers, with special attention paid to promoting strong literary voices. To contribute a story, read our fiction submission guidelines.
related info
- The fiction section of Identity Theory is edited by Andrew Whitacre with assistance from Drew McNaughton.
- For conversations with well-known fiction writers about their craft, see our interviews page.
- To gain insight into the publishing industry, visit our Magic Bullet Q&A for writers.
fiction links
- 2River: On-line since 1996
- 3ammagazine.com
- AGNI
- Atlantic Unbound
- Blithe House Quarterly
- Burning Word
- Caffeine Destiny
- Eleven Bulls
- Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Letters and Life
- Glimmer Train
- Jack Magazine
- Land-Grant College Review
- The Oyster Boy Review
- Pindeldyboz
- Ploughshares, a literary journal
- Small Spiral Notebook
- storySouth
- Thieves Jargon
- Zoetrope: All-Story
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Identity Theory is an online magazine that publishes author interviews, music interviews, original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, book reviews, film reviews, a social justice blog, and whatever else seems like a good idea at the time. Learn more, contact us, get our 
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