Rock & Sling is a literary journal with a longstanding commitment to work that engages questions of faith, doubt, and the moral imagination—though it is not a venue for doctrinal or devotional writing. The journal's editorial sensibility favors fiction that is formally assured, emotionally precise, and unafraid of the metaphysical or the transcendent as lived experience rather than abstract argument. This open call is for general fiction submissions, not a contest; there is no prize, no theme, and no fee. The journal reads without a submission fee, a deliberate choice that reflects its investment in accessibility and in the work itself rather than in gatekeeping economics. Fiction of 5,000 words or less is preferred, but the editors state that longer work will be considered—a signal that the primary criterion is the quality and necessity of the piece, not adherence to a narrow word count. Only one submission per reading window is permitted, which places a premium on self-editing and on sending your strongest, most fully realized work. What the journal offers is publication in a respected literary annual with a distinct curatorial identity: work that takes seriously the interior life, the problem of belief, and the friction between the sacred and the mundane. Writers should understand that this is not a general-interest magazine; it is a journal with a point of view. The most competitive submissions will be those that inhabit that point of view without becoming illustrative or polemical.