Fiction

This is Thin Air Online’s Archive of pieces that are classified as fiction. Here is our showcase of your whimsy and imagination.

  • It Could Be Worse by Lara Waas

    It Could Be Worse by Lara Waas

    For his grandson’s wedding, Franklin wanted to give him something strong and sturdy—something that would last. So he made a coat rack out of a tree. It took him five months. Most of that time was spent looking for the perfect tree. He wandered the woods behind his house, scouting, but no tree seemed good…

  • THE FLARE by Marie Anne Arreola

    THE FLARE by Marie Anne Arreola

    I’m watching my sister blow out her birthday candles in the hottest August ever. The flames flicker defiantly in the thick air. It’s her twelfth birthday, and we’re gathereddespite the warnings on our phones, the haze blurring the horizon, and the feeling thatcelebrating has become an act of resistance. My father is in the yard,…

  • Silent as a Snowflake by Nancy Yuktonis Solak

    Silent as a Snowflake by Nancy Yuktonis Solak

    I’m in a mood—a mood I don’t like one bit. Probably because it’s childish. I can’t stand it when Bob puts me off, won’t talk to me. That “putting off” explains why I’m trudging through snow on my way to the train tracks when I should be home with Bob and the kids. Despite being…

  • DOWN AT THE CROSS WHERE MY SAVIOR DIED by John Dufresne

    DOWN AT THE CROSS WHERE MY SAVIOR DIED by John Dufresne

    When my uncle Walter Ryan gave up drink—this was after the school department fired him for stealing linoleum tiles on top of everything else, and after his wife, Aunt Reba, ran off with my other uncle, Raymond Paradise–he planted all his whiskey bottles, Uncle Walter did, in the backyard, necks up, and pressed rubber dolls’…

  • Old Faithful by John Brantingham

    Old Faithful by John Brantingham

    Arnold turns around after Old Faithful erupts for the cheer behind him. There’s a man down on one knee proposing to a woman in front of a small crowd who are taking pictures. Arnold thinks that maybe he’s in the picture with the geyser and couple. In six months, they will be married, and cancer…

  • These Curtains Have To Go by Richard Keller

    These Curtains Have To Go by Richard Keller

    “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today.” “Us,” TZ17 intervened. “Yes, us,” BS28 agreed. “We have lowered the speed of our processors to an intelligence level that should make us understandable to you.” The two humans stared. Not surprisingly, they’d been in suspended animation for a hundred years. “When your planet…

  • “Goats” by Clay Cantrell

    “Goats” by Clay Cantrell

    “Randy had enough.”

  • “The Understanding” by Lana Citron

    “The Understanding” by Lana Citron

    ‘Say we found it together… we found it today…  say it.’