All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 343–Some Good Things Lost, Gained and A Celebration of Hairspray

Some Good Things Lost

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Wisdom

I asked my grandmother if everything was wonderful in the good old days. She told me that “wonderful” can exist at any time as long as you are young and have enough money. She also said it’s better to be young than anything else, but since nobody stays that way, sources of money should always be cultivated.

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THRIFT

My Grandpa Henry was a custodian at a community college for forty-three years. And although he made a decent “working man’s wage,” and in all other ways was a generous man, not once in his life did he pay more than two-hundred dollars for a car.

He had a thing for extremely tuckered government vehicles at state auctions. One year he landed a 1970-something Plymouth Fury for twenty bucks because he was the only one to bid on it. Grandpa Henry was proud of that car even though the only way to start it was to wrap your left arm behind the wheel and pull hard on the shift while cranking the starter with your other hand and pumping the accelerator, hoping it fired before the battery croaked.

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All Stories, General Fiction

To Serve by Yash Seyedbagheri      

When I was little, I was afraid aliens were going to eat me. Of course, it was just that Twilight Zone episode I’d seen, To Serve Man, the one where a message of peace turned out to be an alien cookbook and the world was its meal, people being fattened up on a spaceship for the slaughter. They had to convince me it was just a show, a parable about humanity and all that.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Wait by Lisa Toner

The child is painfully thin.  Her ribs poke against the taut skin of her back as she draws on the dusty floor with a stick.  She crouches on toothpick legs, supported by hardened feet which rarely see shoes.  The bottoms of her filthy white shorts graze the dirt floor.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Bund by Richard Yu

There were many things in life that Oscar did not comprehend. Miro, for one, totally baffled him. When it comes to abstract painting, he would readily relegate that area of expertise to his wife. Afterall, she had attended art school for a big part of her life, so she was supposedly an art connoisseur as well as an artist herself. What puzzled Oscar was why she bothered to learn all those advanced techniques just so to paint like a five-year-old. “You should find a job teaching kindergarteners how to paint,” Oscar would snipe. Naturally, his wife ignored his snide remarks. Just recently, she had bid on a sketch by Miro for as much as five years his salary, he being a CEO of a high-tech firm that supplied chips for the space shuttle. Had he run across such a sketch in a flea market, he wouldn’t have paid more than the price of a can of sardines for it, if only for the scrap value of the frame and mat.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Lighthouse Keeper by Loredano Cafaro

Today Leonardo comes home crying. When his father and mother hear what his school friend has told him, they understand that the day they have feared for a long time has come— the moment when they will have to start crushing his dreams. They speak to him, say that his friend is right; tell him I do not exist. But they are wrong.

I dream, therefore I am.

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All Stories, General Fiction

From an Appalachian Peak, a Small Red Star for Me and My Father by Tom Sheehan

This appointment came when light tired, this arrangement, this syzygy of him and me and the still threat of a small red star standing some time away at my back, deeper than a grain of memory. I am a quarter mile from him, hard upward on this rugged rock he could look up to if only his eyes would agree once more, and it’s a trillion years behind my head or a parsec I can’t begin to imagine, they tell me even dead perhaps, that star. Can this be a true syzygy if one is dead, if one is leaning to leave this line of sight regardless of age or love or density or how the last piece of light might be reflected, or refused, if one leaves this imposition? The windows of his room defer no light to this night, for it is always night there, blood and chemicals at warfare, nerve gone, the main one providing mirror and lethal lens, back of the eyeball no different than out front, but I climb this rock to line up with another rock and him in the deep seizure of that stolen room, bare sepulcher, that grotto of mind.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Evaluation by Yash Seyedbagheri 

Nick needs his wine. Merlot, Malbec, good dark-colored wines, wines that have just that tinge of bitterness to them but aren’t completely devoid of sweetness. Every night, he pours a glass. Promises himself it’ll be just one glass. But he swigs it in ten minutes straight, feeling the rush of dreaminess, the sense of elegance. He inevitably goes for the second glass, turns on Tchaikovsky or Debussy. Clair De Lune is his go to piece on the most depressing of nights, piano chords that offer tinkling company, the nights after faculty offer unwarranted advice or another student doesn’t understand his comments on a story or another and needs explanation. How do you explain in plain English that a story simply isn’t good?

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All Stories, General Fiction

The IT Guy by Samantha Carr

Dave was convinced his PC was possessed. He’d gone to get a coffee at ten like usual. The earliest reasonable time he could slip away from his desk without looking like he wanted to slack off. Today was Gail’s birthday. Office rules meant she had bought cakes and he wasn’t going to let Sharon get the best. Dave put the muffin with two mini eggs on the desk to the left of his keyboard, and the coffee on top of his SeaWorld coaster and it was then that he saw it.

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