Issue 8: Summer 2026

1. MY HUSBAND WAS SICK with Covid again, his third bout. He said the symptoms felt like a memory reawakening inside him, an echo that rolled through his body: the fever, the breathlessness. For the first two nights we slept separately, but I woke whenever he did – the creak of his bed, his long,…

TO THE EDITORS OF MACLEAN’S, I’m writing because my attempts to contact the senior editor and assistant editor directly have failed. It’s disappointing that a third and fourth attempt have been necessary, but I certainly can’t force you to behave like journalists against your will. Here again I have attached a trove of documents, including…

AT SIX AM, Samantha parked her car in the children’s hospital lot and climbed the stairs to the inpatient wing. It was her second day back from a four-week maternity leave. Truth be told, she was relieved to be getting away from her child. The apartment was devouring her whole. Now she carried the gear,…

IN 50 WORDS OR LESS, describe what you feel to be the biggest obstacle in your relationship. I look over at Bob, watching a trail of words spewing from his pen as it winds back and forth across the page, spelling out everything I’ve done wrong. I’m sure he’s over fifty words by now. I…

OF COURSE SHE WAS GOING TO DIE; she was counting on it. A hundred years old, she would like to hurry it along if she could, ending her last call as she often did, with the request to “pray that I die tonight.” He did not respond. Some days it felt like she was never…

“WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN,” he said, “I skipped school on rainy mornings.” “Rainy mornings? All the time?” she asked. The thought of him being rebellious in any way was at odds with the image she held of her colleague – a man of discipline and ambition. “Mm-hmm,” he said, clearly amused by her reaction. “That’s…

HE STANDS in front of the hall mirror, making a few final adjustments to his uniform and kit – a flattening of his collar, a hitch of his duty belt to settle the handgun into position on his right hip, a tug at the neck-hole of his ballistic vest to ease the pinch of kevlar…

THE CEILING FAN in Ward Office C dragged through the thick, static air of the afternoon, clicking rhythmically with every third rotation. Below it, the queue of applicants remained motionless, a single organism sweating in the humidity, held together by the gravity of the counter and the plexiglass barrier that separated them from Subhash. Subhash…