Spring Coming-of-Age Short Stories

The safety bar crushed his ribs as the coaster ground into another tiny, pointless circle.

Spring rot turned the lake to slush, but it was the glowing thing beneath the ice that ended everything.

Ben's thigh twitched with a phantom vibration. The phone was gone, but the ghost was still there.

Stella discovers that the toxic black mold in her bedroom responds to the hyper-pop frequencies on her cracked smartphone.

Willy buys a cursed blanket to escape social burnout, but wakes up speaking in customer service scripts and glitches.

The brick connects with a wet crunch. I do not wait to watch him spit out his teeth.

Jack struggles with frozen soil and mental static until a winter garden forces him to finally start breathing.

Toby arrives at an off-grid cabin, battling signal loss while his grandfather ignores his digital crisis for maple sap.

A spilled drink breaks the digital static, forcing two burned-out strangers to breathe the same heavy air.