Featured Fiction: “The Candelabra” by Ben Loory

May 29, 2015
Retro candlestick with candles on wooden table, on black background

To finish Short Story Month in style, we are pleased to bring you “The Candelabra” by Ben Loory. We loved his collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and we are thrilled to be publishing an original tale of hisWhile “The Candelabra” is just about five hundred words, it palpably conveys the ways in which we take those we love for granted, down to the smallest detail.

Retro candlestick with candles on wooden table, on black background

     The grandmother starts staying up later and later, long after everyone else has gone to bed. She sits in the living room, in the dark, with her hands folded in her lap.
One night the mother—her daughter—finds her there. She’s on her way to the bathroom.
Mother, she says, what are you doing?
She reaches out and turns on the light.
Don’t, says the grandmother.
She holds up a hand.
But what are you doing? the mother says.
She waits for an answer.
No answer comes.
You can’t just sit here in the dark, she says.

Read the rest of “The Candelabra” here.

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At The Masters Review, our mission is to support emerging writers. We only accept submissions from writers who can benefit from a larger platform: typically, writers without published novels or story collections or with low circulation. We publish fiction and nonfiction online year-round and put out an annual anthology of the ten best emerging writers in the country, judged by an expert in the field. We publish craft essays, interviews and book reviews and hold workshops that connect emerging and established writers.



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