From "The Dogs of Babel"

In honor of issue 9.3 finally arriving, we'd like to offer up a sample of what it's packing. Even more, we'd like to offer up a glimpse of the winning story of the 2015 Arcadia Short Story Contest, Tom Howard's "The Dogs of Babel." We hope you'll want to read more.

Tom's fiction has appeared recently in The Cincinnati Review, Willow Springs, Bellingham Review, and Quarter After Eight. He lives with his wife and a strange, wonderful black dog in Arlington, Virginia.

From "The Dogs of Babel"

Sunday morning Petra wakes up to find her nail polish laid out on the bathroom counter, while her eleven-year-old son sits bent over in concentration on the tile floor. Eight of his toenails are purple.

“Was bored,” says Del, without looking up.

“Okay, yeah. It’s not even seven o’clock.” Leans down for a closer look, says, “But you did an amazing job,” which is true. On his toenails, anyway. The countertop and the floor have sustained some damage.

He stares down at his toes. Grimly serious.

Squatting down to inspect the bottle, Petra says, “Purple Mountains Majesty, a classic.”

“I’m calling it something else.” Squinting up at her now. “Can I do that?”

“Sure.” When he was younger and still learning to read, Del liked to puzzle out the names, which led to an appreciation for puns that his teachers didn’t share. “Something funny?”

“Apoopalypse.”

“Always the poop jokes.”

Shrugging, “Can I do my fingers too?”

She barely hesitates. “Go for it,” she says. “A little less on the floor, though.”

Petra spends the rest of the morning cleaning out the basement storage room and going through Del’s winter clothes, trying to figure out what still fits and what she’ll need to replace. He has stuff over at Mike’s, but she’s already heard the lecture about No Sharing Between Houses. Because That’s How Things Get Lost, and by Things we mean things that Mike and Noreen bought. So, okay guys. Two pairs of galoshes it is.

Now and then Del asks her opinion about a new color. By late afternoon he’s settled on a light blue shade that Petra can’t remember buying.

“Blue Skies Ahead,” she says.

"Morris the Orangutan,” he counters.

“Okay, yeah.”

She has to help him with the right hand, trying to draw him out without giving him the full-court press. Not easy with Del, whose first complete sentence came at age four. A lot of speculation about autism and other developmental disorders. The diagnosis changed every year, but to Petra, her son only seemed wrapped in this odd cloud of melancholy from which he periodically, though infrequently, emerged.

Want to read more? Pick up a copy of 9.3 here.