When they brought him home that night, the lid was strewn canted off the wooden lip and jacks and queens ornamented astray around the box like a ring of fire. Someone- I do not remember who- had loaded coal into the fireplace and after some poking it begun to lick its flame at the iron grate. Ma was cold and Paul and Jane huddled around the hearth for they were cold but I suppose not as cold as him. Still, it only felt right to keep him warm.
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Four Giraffes by Alex Faulkner
The four giraffes walked through the city, their metal limbs and their pulleys, gears and crankshafts clanking and whirring as they delicately placed one foot in front of another, and another and another and another.
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At Spences Bridge by Harrison Kim
Cody uploads the video of his day from his phone to the computer and does a voice-over.
“Other people try to draw us into their nightmares,” he states, “My video will show you what it’s like to travel alone.”
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Gordo by Ashley Earls Davis
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His eyes are fixed to the street, staring blankly at the late sunlit cars queuing over the cross. Like he’s thinking. Or perhaps he’s pissed. He lifts a full ten of stout to his pouted lips and takes two long gulps, spine arched tautly at the dust-strewn pane. Is it Rod? Or that bloke we called Doggo? I scratch my neck and try to remember his name. He lowers his glass and digs out some chips from a bowl in front of him. Dips them in tomato sauce and shoves them in his gob. Reaches for his cold one again. I grin at him. His hand movements are overly cautious. Like those of an old codger’s. Well I suppose we are both over the hill now aren’t we? Poor us bastards.
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Sunday Whatever – John the Revelator by Dale Williams Barrigar
John Lennon in his Pickwick glasses is like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, or much like Dickens himself in his concern for social justice and his endless sympathy for the literal, and figurative, orphan, outsider, and underdog. Lennon can also fruitfully be compared to perhaps the only other English writer of the nineteenth century who rivals Dickens in staying power and popularity. Like Lewis Carroll and his beloved, living Alice, Lennon’s life was all about expanding the mind, and through the mind, the heart.
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Blood Lovers by Gerald Coleman
At the haggard edges of New York City, the Fourth Avenue Local of the RR Line started or ended, depending upon your intentions, at Ninety-Fifth Street on the far ass-end of Brooklyn, where the city skyline was but an aspiration. You could barely see the Statue of Liberty if you were on a rooftop and knew where to look.
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Dimps by Geraint Jonathan
She gave me the grandest name. Bardonneche. Lovely isn’t it. Didn’t suit me at all. Or not so’s you could see. Would suit me even less now, pruned up bag of bones that I am. But I wasn’t pretty even then. Mind you, neither was she. Pretty we were not.
She was Cleanthes, I was Bardonneche. We became a team.
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Tip Run by Alex Kellet
I knew I shouldn’t have come to the tip on a Sunday, the queues are always massive. I should have come in the week, but I couldn’t be arsed. Yet another mistake I’ve made. Petrol is nearly empty as well, that’s another job I’ll have to do. Never fucking ends, does it?
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The Silence by Rehanul Hoque
The dimness of the room was perfect for them both. That was how she loved it; the gentle light covered up the years that had become ingrained in her skin and the weariness in her eyes. He never asked for more light. Every Tuesday, he would drop by, say nothing, and leave a wad of money on the dresser.
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The Footnotes by Christopher Ananias
Our boy is in trouble again. Belvin has done something. This time it is all over the news. The red drag of stoplights. “Why are we even going?” says Genie.
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