LATE SUMMER! Post-Labor Day. A time of earlier sunsets, cooling nights, and poignant melancholy accompanying the end of summer’s carefree days. A time of change, wistfulness, memories.

Our new feature short story, “Big Lagoon” by Thomas Thonson is a tale about summer experiences and memories, of present merging with past– with persons from the past– an artistic blend of setting and personality, of experience that jumps out at you. With a hint of a surprise which calls into question our narrator, or at minimum, our opinion of him. Or a taste of another dimension. An example of what the fictional literary art can accomplish when all elements work harmoniously together.

A summer story. But is it the best short story of this 2025 summer? We think so!

Going out in that storm was the kind of idea only Marcel would’ve come up with. He was the daredevil, and I was his willing accomplice. He was also a talker––a voluminous, non-stop, wildly imaginative talker. His words could fill you with a sense of expectation, of worlds you hadn’t even dreamed of.

(ALSO stay up to date with everything happening at our Fast Pop Lit site, where everything happens fast, and will get faster.)