Joshua Stavick

Contemporary Stories

  • When One Loves the Fae

    When One Loves the Fae

    Theodore loved faeries, and so I loved him. Not because he loved faeries—obviously, they weren’t real—but because of what loving something meant to him: devotion, adventure, borderline obsession. To the rest of the world, he was a typical college dropout: academically unmotivated, easily distracted. A never-man.

  • No More Running

    No More Running

    Mom said we weren’t running away—that was a lie.  She drove, the car devouring the winding grey river pavement stretching out before us. The surrounding mountains swelled wider and higher as we went, sheltering peaks blanketed by a vast quilt, tattered and aflame with all the colors of early autumn.

  • Your Call

    Your Call

    Your call surprised me. Your proposal to meet again after these three long years apart. A rendezvous at my old high school, a place so memory-stained from our time together that while pacing and anxious, awaiting your arrival, I trip over more ghosts of our youth than I can count.