FICTION
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POETRY
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SATIRE
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FICTION • POETRY • SATIRE •
On Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks
an ekphrastic poem
By Ridley Longsworth
The city holds its breath.
Glass glows like a held thought,
a pane of light stitched
into the dark.
Inside, coffee never cools.
Words never quite arrive.
A man turns his back to the world,
wearing silence like a coat.
A woman cups loneliness
between red-painted lips.
Her companion stares past her,
past the counter,
past whatever hope walked in earlier
and left no tip.
The waiter waits—
forever mid-gesture
forever almost asking
how they are doing
and already knowing the answer.
No door opens.
The street offers nothing
but empty angles
and the promise of morning
that no one mentions.
I stand outside the frame,
face pressed to the invisible glass,
recognizing the hour
when thoughts grow loud
and company feels optional.
Some nights we choose the light
without choosing each other.
Some nights we sit together
and practice being alone.
This poem is an ekphrastic meditation on Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks (1942).
Aperture & Void: A Restaurant Review
satire
By Ridley Longsworth
Aperture & Void, located deep within a reclaimed industrial park, promises an experience of gastronomic friction. It delivers on that promise, but the friction is entirely between the diner’s common sense and the chef’s nihilistic ambition. The visit felt less like a meal and more like a high-end, carefully orchestrated psychological evaluation designed to see how much absurdity one would tolerate before demanding the check.
The ambiance is less "minimalist chic" and more "brutalist purgatory." The walls are poured concrete, painted a noncommittal shade of ash, and the temperature is maintained at a perpetual, slightly too-cool 62 degrees. The only sound is the white noise of a faulty ventilation system, giving the room an air of sterile, expectant dread. Our server, whose uniform resembled a hospital scrub and whose demeanor suggested deep-seated philosophical regret, presented the "menu," a pair of smooth river stones on the zinc table, making it clear that hospitality here is subservient to the chef's performance art.
We began with the appetizer, The Unwritten History of the Cod ($85). This was served on a polished, black granite slab that was freezing to the touch. The dish consisted of three things: a single, glistening flake of perfectly poached cod; a massive, unappetizing chunk of raw, hand-mined sea salt; and a single, tiny, lukewarm parsley leaf. The flake of fish was sublime (tender, oily, oceanic), but its isolation was agonizing. The presentation did not complement the fish; it mocked it. When questioned about the gargantuan salt rock, the server merely whispered, "It is meant to suggest the vastness of possibility."
The centerpiece was the disastrous Quiet Collapse of Structure ($120), a supposed pork cheek course. The presentation was stunning: a single, deeply caramelized cube of meat centered on a bone-white plate. The moment my fork (which was fashioned from a cold, heavy piece of oxidized copper) made contact, the meat, which should have been firm, simply dissolved. Not melted, but instantly collapsed into a dark, rich liquid that soaked immediately into the ceramic. It was technically cooked, yet engineered to defy the physical act of eating, turning the pursuit of flavor into an instant failure. I was left with a forkful of sauce and the dizzying realization that the meal was designed to be beautiful, expensive, and impossible to consume.
After the existential crisis of the pork cheek, we proceeded to what was labeled as the mid-course: The Parable of the Empty Plate ($95). This dish was a culinary exercise in auditory distortion. It featured a teaspoon-sized coil of bright green, extruded kelp "pasta" placed at the very center of a massive, heavily insulated, bell-shaped ceramic bowl. The bowl had been heated to an unnerving temperature, causing it to amplify every scrape of the copper fork and every distant, guttural kitchen noise into a shocking racket. The kelp coil itself tasted profoundly of nothing but saltwater and regret, and the volume of the serving vessel felt specifically designed to humiliate the diner with the sheer disparity between the size of the container and the emptiness of the experience.
For the grand finale, we faced Negative Space and the Taste of Yesterday ($75). A dessert should be a gentle denouement; this was a sharp, bitter conclusion. It arrived as a perfectly square block of frozen, clarified shiitake mushroom consommé, placed on a slab of slate. The block was dusted heavily with ultra-fine, flavorless activated charcoal powder, which resembled soot. The texture was clean and cold, but the flavor was jarringly savory and earthy (a bitter, cold anticlimax that extinguished any lingering warmth or expectation of sweetness). Our server informed us that the dish "challenges the binary of comfort and consumption," which, translated, means "it tastes like frozen dirt."
In summary, Aperture & Void is a culinary critique of dining itself. The dishes are brilliant in their cruelty but fail as food. It is an act of expensive, self-indulgent conceptual art. Unless you are looking to spend your entire paycheck proving the chef's cynical point about modern consumption, avoid the Void. Rating: 0.5/5 Stars (The perfect collapse of the pork cheek was at least a memorable scientific feat.)
This work first appeared in The Radish on January 5, 2026. It won a Scholastic Gold Key Writing Award and has been nominated for an American Voices Award. It is part of my satirical “Restaurant Review” series. You can also read my reviews of The Fern & Fable and The Rusty Hubcap (all fictional establishments, just like Aperture & Void). Any resemblance to actual restaurants is purely coincidental.
Why I Despise Christmas Trees
a christmas story
By Ridley Longsworth
Every December, like clockwork, they appear. Glittering monstrosities in living rooms, malls, and town squares. Towering green lies wrapped in fake joy and overpriced LED lights.
I didn’t always hate them. As a kid, I felt the magic. The way the twinkling lights blinked like stars, how the room smelled of pine and cinnamon, and how presents bloomed beneath it while we stared in awe.
But magic has a short shelf life, especially when it gets packed away in boxes marked “XMAS” every January.
It was our first Christmas after Dad left. Mom was trying to keep the traditions alive. She bought the biggest tree in the lot, a Douglas fir so wide it barely fit through the front door. We strung it with memories: the handmade ornaments, the one emblazoned with “World’s Best Dad” that we all pretended not to see.
It fell in the night. Glass across the carpet. The lights still flickering on their sides. Mom sweeping with a dustpan before dawn, silent. Like the tree had finally given up pretending, too.
We never bought a real tree again. After that, it was a plastic one from the basement that reeked of mildew and disappointment. I watched it lean against the wall year after year, like it couldn’t bear to stand up on its own anymore. It became a symbol of our collective exhaustion, dressed up in blinking lights to hide how broken it really was.
And let’s not even start on the commercial ones—the trees that are dressed up like department store mannequins, paraded on social media, and used as props in holiday-themed influencer content. They're not about joy anymore. They're about optics. A curated illusion of togetherness. Because nothing says “family” like smiling in front of a tree while barely speaking to each other the rest of the day.
So no, I don’t hate Christmas. I hate what the tree pretends it means.
This year, I didn’t put one up. No ornaments. No lights. Just a quiet apartment and a candle that smells like pine, because, okay, the scent is nice.
And maybe that’s enough.
The Fern & Fable: A Restaurant Review
satire
By Ridley Longsworth
The Fern & Fable is the kind of café that makes you feel like you accidentally walked into a high-budget commercial for insurance or name-brand dish soap. It is perfectly, relentlessly pleasant. There is not a single scuff on the whitewashed floorboards, and every potted plant looks like it has been coached on how to grow in the most photogenic direction possible. It is a space designed for people who want the idea of a coffee shop without any of the actual mess that comes with human beings existing in a room together.
When you walk in, you are met with a wall of sound that consists entirely of “Lo-Fi Hip Hop Beats To Study/Relax To.” It is played at a volume that is just high enough to prevent you from having a private conversation, but low enough that it feels like a soft wool blanket is being held over your face. It’s undeniably beautiful, and yet, five minutes after sitting down, I found myself desperately wishing someone would drop a tray or yell at a delivery driver just to break the spell.
The menu is a masterpiece of modern font choices. I ordered the “Signature Oat Miel,” which the barista told me was their most popular drink. The barista was perfectly polite, wearing a linen apron that looked like it had never met a coffee stain in its life. He smiled with exactly the right amount of teeth and asked if I wanted my name on the cup. When the drink arrived, the latte art was a flawless rosette. It was almost too symmetrical to drink.
As for the taste, it was…fine. It was the absolute middle of the road. The espresso was mild, the oatmilk was creamy, and the honey was sweet. It tasted exactly like every other thirty-dollar bag of “ethically sourced” beans I’ve ever had. There was no bitterness, but there was also no character. It was a drink that was impossible to hate and equally impossible to remember. I also tried the avocado toast, because apparently it’s a legal requirement for shops like this to serve it. It came topped with “micro-greens” and a sprinkle of chili flakes that looked like they had been placed there with a pair of tweezers. It was fresh, it was crunchy, and it was entirely devoid of any soul.
The customers at The Fern & Fable are all part of the aesthetic. Everyone is sitting behind a very thin, very silver laptop. No one is talking. The only noise is the light tapping of keys and the occasional hiss of the milk steamer. It’s a great place to go if you need to finish a spreadsheet or if you want to take a photo of your shoes against a nice floor. If you want a place that feels alive, or a place where the coffee tells a story about where it came from, this isn’t it.
The Fern & Fable is a “decent” café in the same way a boutique hotel lobby is a “decent” living room. It provides everything you ask for but gives you nothing you didn’t expect. I left feeling caffeinated and strangely empty, like I had just spent an hour inside a very nice screensaver. It’s the perfect spot for when you want to disappear into the background of your own life for a while. Rating: 3/5 Stars
This piece is part of my satirical “Restaurant Review” series. You can also read my reviews of Aperture & Void and The Rusty Hubcap (both fictional establishments, just like The Fern & Fable). Any resemblance to actual restaurants is purely coincidental.
The Fifth Step
dystopian fiction
By Ridley Longsworth
The tunnels beneath the city always smelled of dust, metal, and secrets. Lira moved through them like a shadow, her patched coat brushing the damp walls, her boots soundless against the concrete. In her bag, a thin bundle wrapped in oilcloth—a copy of The Old Histories, one of the last known to exist. Worth a fortune to the right buyer. Worth her life if caught.
She paused at a junction, pressing her hand to the stone. The vibration told her what her ears couldn’t—footsteps above, slow and deliberate. Patrols. The Ministry’s Seekers.
She waited. Counted the seconds. Mapped their rhythm.
Five steps ahead, always five.
Once, long ago, she hadn’t been quick enough. The orphanage walls had closed in like iron jaws—rules, punishments, the Director’s shouts. She’d escaped by crawling through a drain pipe in the dead of winter, lungs burning, heart promising never again. Never trapped. Never caught.
A soft buzz in her earpiece broke her thoughts.
“Lira? You there?”
The voice was cracked, old static—Jett, her contact.
“I’m here.”
“Change of plans. Client’s dead. Ministry raided the docks.”
Lira swore under her breath. “Then why am I still carrying this thing?”
There was a pause. Then, quieter: “Because I found something else. A name. From the old orphanage records.”
Her breath caught. “Don’t play with me.”
“It says Mira Pell. Transferred to Facility Nine. Alive.”
For a long moment, all she could hear was her own heartbeat—fast, sharp, disbelieving. Her sister’s name. After all these years.
“Send me the coordinates,” she said finally.
“Lira, that place—”
“Send them.”
The route to Facility Nine took her beyond the city’s grid, past the neon hum of the towers and into the ruins where silence was law. Along the way, she bartered pages for passage, stories for shelter—each trade a small erosion of the walls she’d built to stay unseen. Every step closer to Mira felt like walking into light, and she hated the hope that came with it.
When she finally reached the facility, dawn was bleeding through the clouds. The gates were rusted, the walls half-collapsed. But the locks—the locks were new.
Inside, she found rooms full of broken machinery and ash. The ghosts of experiments past. And in the lowest level, a flicker of life—a generator still humming, feeding a single cryo-chamber.
Through the frost-covered glass, a girl. Pale. Sleeping.
Her reflection stared back at her—lean frame, messy hair, eyes ringed with exhaustion. For a heartbeat, she couldn’t tell which one was real.
“...Mira?” she whispered.
A voice behind her answered instead.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
She spun. A Seeker stood in the doorway, gun leveled, his uniform gleaming with the Ministry’s insignia.
“We kept her alive because she’s valuable,” he said. “You can walk away, Lira. Stay invisible. Like you always do.”
She looked once more at her sister—and then at the book in her bag. The Old Histories. The truth no one wanted known.
“Not anymore,” she said.
And for the first time in years, she didn’t think five steps ahead.
She just moved.
When the explosion lit up the morning sky, the city’s alarms screamed awake. And in the ruins outside the city, two figures walked together beneath the breaking dawn. One limping, one weak but alive. Lira didn’t look back. She’d lost everything she’d built to survive.
But for once, that meant she was finally free.
The Rusty Hubcap: A Restaurant Review
satire
By Ridley Longsworth
If you find yourself driving down Highway 41 at three in the morning, you will eventually see the flickering green neon sign of The Rusty Hubcap. It is not a beckoning light. It is a warning. This diner does not exist to serve food so much as it exists to endure. It is a monument to the era of wood paneling, linoleum floors that are permanently tacky to the touch, and a philosophy of service that can only be described as aggressive indifference.
The moment you slide into a booth, you are greeted by a vinyl seat that has been patched with duct tape so many times it looks like a silver spiderweb. The air inside smells of two things: ancient fryer oil and a cleaning product that was probably banned in the late eighties. There is no background music. Instead, you get the rhythmic thumping of a walk-in freezer that sounds like a heartbeat and the occasional muffled argument from the kitchen about whose turn it is to “scrape the griddle.”
Our server was a woman named Barb. Barb has a haircut that defies the laws of physics and a voice like she’s been eating gravel for breakfast. She didn’t bring menus. She just stood there with a stained notepad and stared at us until the silence became unbearable. When I asked what was good, she exhaled a cloud of what I’m fairly certain was secondhand smoke and said, “The eggs don’t bounce today.” It was the most honest piece of culinary advice I have ever received.
I ordered the “Trucker’s Glory,” a plate that consisted of two eggs, three strips of bacon that looked like they had been mummified, and a pile of hash browns that were burnt on the outside and strangely liquid on the inside. The coffee was a different story entirely. It was served in a thick ceramic mug with a chip on the rim, and it was strong enough to peel paint off a car door. It didn’t taste like beans. It tasted like any dark, hot liquid that has been brewing since the interstate was paved. It was, in a very specific and terrifying way, exactly what I needed.
My companion ordered the “Famous Chili.” This was a mistake. The chili arrived in a bowl that was uncomfortably hot, while the contents remained lukewarm. It was a dark brown sludge that seemed to move of its own volition. There were beans in there, sure, but there were also unidentified chunks of “meat” that had the texture of a pencil eraser. Barb watched them take the first bite with a look of grim satisfaction, like a scientist observing a lab rat enter a maze.
The strange thing about The Rusty Hubcap is that it isn’t bad in a way that makes you want to leave. It is bad in a way that feels authentic. In a world of polished, corporate coffee chains and pre-packaged sandwiches, there is something oddly comforting about a place that refuses to improve. It doesn’t care about your Yelp review. It doesn’t care about your dietary restrictions. It barely cares if you survive the meal.
We left with a lingering case of heartburn and a bill that was written on the back of a napkin. The Rusty Hubcap is a terrible restaurant, but it is a magnificent experience. It is the kind of place you go when you want to feel like a character in a gritty road movie where nothing ends well. Go for the coffee, stay for the existential dread, and definitely bring some Tums. Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
This piece is part of my satirical “Restaurant Review” series. You can also read my reviews of Aperture & Void and The Fern and Fable (both fictional establishments, just like The Rusty Hubcap). Any resemblance to actual restaurants is purely coincidental.