It’s not difficult to understand how she did it – liver and lungs. They can only take so much abuse, then they quit. I knew for years she was trying to kill herself.
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Category: All Stories
Renaissance by Yash Seyedbagheri
Spring breaks through my empty walls and drawn curtains, an impenetrable fortress. It spills onto cell phones where sisterly jokes about my old-school wardrobe and loving and laughing face emojis no longer wait. Sunlight taunts the charcoal-colored shadows that keep me company on empty couches that smell of musk, armpits, Malbecs, and sativas.
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Graham by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content And Very Strong Language.
“Hello baby, how are you? It’s lovely to know you’re there.
You do what mummy says, be a good girl. Now put mummy back on the phone. Thanks baby! I love you! You know that daddy loves you! Thanks baby!
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Paper-Lined Tables by Rachel Sievers
“Will you bring me something to drink from the kitchen?” She asks with her feet up on the couch. I swivel from my perch looking out the kitchen window. The open floor plan of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house makes it easy to see the bottoms of her feet from where they lay on top of the armrest of our couch. Her neon pink socks have white writing that read: if you can read this bring me wine. I consider her socks and reach into the walnut cabinet and pull out a water glass, filling it directly from the sink. I bring her the full glass and hold it out to her. She doesn’t look up from her phone but grabs the water glass and brings it to her pale and chapped lips. She needs to drink more water.
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Literally Reruns – You won’t believe it by Rohit Arora
Rerun number two from Joy.
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The Sack by Richard Huw Williams
Pete’s night at the pub with his old school friends had brought the usual mix of nostalgia, laughter and awkwardness. Now living in the city, it was great to return – occasionally – to his home village in the countryside to catch up with everyone. Sure, most of them were the same. Same jokes, same haircuts, same lies. But the familiarity was comforting. The devil you knew didn’t tend to disappoint you as much as the devil you didn’t.
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The List by Hugh Cron
One more drink.
Only one.
I need a clear head to stop me doing what I really want.
I have a list of names and I want to type up some misfortune beside each of them.
But I’ve not done that yet.
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Troublemaker by Cathy Adams
The first thing Clara stole was one of those glittery cell phone covers that looks more like the cover for a light switch. That was Clara’s first impression of the flat, pink object with rhinestones shaped into a falling star. She was in Target, and the clerk she had asked to help her find shoestrings told her to go to the seventh aisle where there were definitely no shoestrings but row upon row of phone covers, useless plastic rectangles that were supposed to “reveal your personal expressiveness.”
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Parent Interview by Jill Malleck
My last parent interview of the day was late, by a good twenty minutes, and the damn meeting was only booked for fifteen. Truth was, I didn’t care that Derek’s folks hadn’t shown. For two hours I’d spent fifteen-minute slots explaining to overly optimistic parents how they’d raised kids as dumb as doornails. Nothing I hated more than parent interviews, except teaching in the 8:30 am session. No science to it; try teaching teenage zombies.
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Hana by Mariam Saidan
I’m baking a cake, a well-mixed paste of carefully measured amounts of flour, eggs, oil, sugar, banana, baking powder and a pinch of cinnamon, ready to go in the oven for 45 minutes, when she knocks on the door. I think of taking my apron off, but I decide not to. It’s cute, with birds frolicking in a pink world. I look like an unusually traditional woman for our time, I feel. A woman. A kitchen. An apron. A cake. Pink. But I feel something perverse, almost noble, in quietly subverting these clichés still viciously clinging to these symbols.
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