How he came to finding her was funny. Funny ha ha. But fuck all else about this was funny.
*
Fuck.
He dropped the key. Or the key dropped out of his hand. Depending on your level of charitability.
Double fuck and bollocks.
Continue reading “The Girl with the Feet by Jane Houghton”
Three or four years ago I gave up on network television for the sake of my safety. It doesn’t mean that I have departed from gazing glassy-eyed into a screen, but nowadays I feed the vacuum in my mind caused by a lifetime of watching TV with YouTube and NetFlix. The TV is still on, but in the other room, tuned to one of those retro-channels, to long since departed shows, which star dead actors who come back to life for twenty-three to forty-six minutes five days a week, in worlds where forever usually arrives no later than 1982.
The main reason for this involves the Discovery Channel and its spin-offs on basic cable. For years my general sense of fear and isolation was greatly enhanced by an endless succession of learned talking heads who glibly informed me what would happen to Earth if it wandered too close to a black hole or was bathed in a gamma ray burst or nailed by an asteroid the size of Cincinnati. And none of it was pretty. End of Days. Repent. I was more distrubed, however, by the smarmy attitude of the scientists who spoke of these possible calamities with twinkles in their eyes. Why were they so happy to suggest these things? Isn’t everyday living hard enough already? Are these people sociopaths? And how come they all wear khaki pants and blue shirts? Even Victor Frankenstien owned a tie.
Continue reading “Week 341: Where Have All the Disposable Ensigns Gone and Results From the Great Cat Division of the Feline Olympics”
The spell called for a dead man’s hand. Not just any dead man but, according to the manual, “the hand of the man who killed one most dear.” That put old Elizie in a bad spot. It wasn’t that she would have minded sacrificing someone close to her. The problem was there was no such person. The only solution was to have someone else perform the ritual.
Continue reading “One Final Ingredient by Lamont A. Turner”
As a schoolboy, Sam Groat had played in the same boys teams as a previous captain of West Bromwich Albion; his teammates from back then had all agreed that Sam had been the better footballer. His mother was an anarchist refugee from the Spanish Civil War. His father was killed in his car by a drunken plastic surgeon attempting an emergency plane landing on the B5032 outside Kirk Ireton.
Continue reading ” The Questing Knight by Michael Bloor”
I thought it would be a relief to escape, to finally be free; free from the accusing eyes, the whispered comments, the scornful stares. And for me, it was. It was glorious freedom. I relished the human interaction that was suddenly possible. I was free to be me without being accused of being a witch or a devil’s child. But for mother it seemed to be a punishment, to be void of punishment. This puzzled me; indeed I was hard to understand my mother’s plight, why she spurned the friendly people of Austria, always polite and a willing confidant, but never inviting friendship. After a while the reason became apparent; it was the embroidered patch on her dress that still set her apart, not because others spurned her, but because mother chose to keep that scarlet token as a wall between herself and the Old World.
Continue reading “Pearl by Morgan Krueger”
Mama wants another glass of Malbec.
“Just one,” she says, motioning to her wine glass, festooned with red and golden swirling leaves.
Continue reading “Full Pour by Yash Seyedbagheri “
Everyone in this place talks about Dr. Redd. I had never wanted to talk to staff because (1) my spies would get wind of it, (2) Dr. Redd sounds crazier than the patients here and (3) he might get suspicious. Nurse Bealer, who looks like Charles Laughton on a bad day, convinced me to go. She just wanted me off the ward for an hour or so.
Continue reading “Visiting Dr. Redd by Constance Woodring.”
You know, sometimes people die because of inattention. That’s what happened to Zelda May Crawford, the community activist. Zelda was down on 7th and Broadway just a yakking away on her cell. Poor Baby stepped in front of the number 10 crosstown express bus. Splat! And that was that.
Continue reading “Dead Certain by Frederick K Foote”
He has come out of a dread silence and given himself a name; Saugus, he says. He bleats like a tethered goat to come out of that coming, to be away, dense spiral to the core of self, to the mountain call, bird arc across such slopes of pale imaginings.
Continue reading “A Salutation to My Saugus, Embassy of the 2nd Muse by Tom Sheehan”
Wattle’s life had a rough start. His mother died during childbirth, and his father was in Louisiana State Penitentiary. His first home was a run-down orphanage in New Orleans. At age fifteen, the institution closed, and he was thrust out to fend for himself. Wattle had learned many skills in survival, but he had never gone to school. So he enrolled in a state college on a paupers grant. After several years, he earned a bachelor’s degree and found work with a non-profit serving the homeless in Baton Rouge.
Continue reading “Wattle & Daub by Tim Hildebrandt”
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