West Texas Ghost Story

I heard someone say there are no more ghosts in West Texas. That the oilmen drained them all from the ground when they built the derricks that dot the desert plains.I don’t think this is quite true.I see the edges of their bright plastic hats and leather-palmed gloves around every run-down corner in Odessa, rising in…

Flaming fiddles, it looks like there’s a roadblock here! If you’d like to finish reading this piece, please buy a subscription—you’ll get access to the entire online archive of F(r)iction.
Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) is a queer, previously unhoused veteran. Their fiction can be found in Story, Fairy Tale Review, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. Other work appears in The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, Consequence, and other journals. They teach at the University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash and are the Managing Editor of New Ohio Review.

Isabel Burke

Isabel Burke has been drawing ever since she could pick up a pencil. She brought her passion for storytelling from Austin, Texas, to the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she graduated in 2022 with a degree in illustration and a minor in sequential art. She hopes to continue working in the publishing and editorial industries to bring stories to life through comics and illustration. When she’s not drawing, she loves cooking, watching historical dramas, and reading!


First Featured In: No. 21, spring 2024

The Unseen Issue

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