“What the people believe is true.”
—Nanabush, Son of the West Wind, Grandson of the Moon
I was a story I told myself.
My body required mechanical help with inputs and outputs, causes and effects—the purpose of one function needed to be fitted to the function of a higher purpose, from swerve of nerve to bend of bone, synapse to neuron across the junctions electric.
Continue reading “The Story of Jimmy Gray by Gerry Coleman”
‘I’m sorry,’ said the waiter. ‘Do I recognise you?’
‘Shouldn’t have thought so,’ replied Robert. ‘I imagine I have the same face as any other holiday canaller, one whose week has become a search for water points and a battle with the bilge pump.’
Robert looked across to where Sylvie was staring pursed-lipped into the pub’s log burner.
‘Brave,’ continued the waiter, who judging by the empty tables surrounding them was not overworked. ‘Navigating the Llangollen in January.’
Continue reading “The Navvy’s Bargain by Matthew J. Richardson”
I was surveying the sandy beach laid out before me from a vantage point on the clifftop. I’d been hiking for hours, days on end, along the coastal path. It was late in the century. Herring gulls and fulmars rode the thermals of the summer’s day and I was thinking about the latest spiders.
The creepy beasts have a long and honourable history, beginning in the depths of ancient time. But it was millennia before we were able to unleash their true potential.
Continue reading “A Thing about Spiders by Alex Faulkner”
There is something about the feel of a coin. It’s that cool heavy feeling. I had a year’s worth of Alcoholics Anonymous coins in my pocket, and I jingled them as I walked down this country road.
The concrete road was cracked and unmarked, and the sky was darkening. A few hundred meters ahead stood what looked like an old-timey photo booth.
Continue reading “Insert Coin by Ari Derin”
Jenny stood at the dingy laundromat’s bulletin board. She wore a bright red Indiana University shirt and jeans. The crude flyer showed five or six stick figures holding hands in a circle. Two suspiciously looked like they had a penis or almost three legs. She smiled and thought, Maybe that’s what I want to see. They danced in bright green crayon slashes of grass in some pagan ritual around a blue gazing-ball. The smiley-face sun, shining from the top right corner, looked sneaky and somehow hateful. Like it was holding its middle sun-finger up just off the page. Black words cut across the lightly shaded blue sky. FORTUNES READ by Sue at Backwaters Salon $50. No Refunds.
Continue reading “The Backwaters by Christopher J. Ananias”
In our city, the floodgates are kept shut by a machine powered on human breath. We call it the regulator. It listens to the lungs the same way a metronome listens to music. If rhythm breaks, the gates slip. Then the river takes everything.
Continue reading “They Say It’s Wonderful by Prin Sairungsri”
I’m Lloyd Landover (aka Low), and this is the first day of high school for my twin sister Linda (aka Falling Down Girl) and me.
Our Mom is Lidia Landover, and she works with numbers for the federal government. She’s not a mathematician, statistician, physicist, astronomer, actuary, or accountant.
Mom doesn’t solve math problems. She doesn’t create theories based on math. She plays very intently with every level of math, and somewhere in the results are stuff the government really wants. She calls her work “math doodling.”
Continue reading “The Landovers by Frederick K Foote”
A moment before the horror begins.
Imagine two ruthless creatures, each a child’s worst—and often last—nightmare. The first fiend
is a shape-shifting monster. He terrorizes and devours children in the guise of Pennywise, an evil clown. Pennywise gained public attention in a book by a famous American author. The book is purported to be fiction, but this was a ruse to hide the author’s desperate fear of the main character, Pennywise. Alas, the child-eating clown is all too real.
Our second nightmare is the officially sanctioned kidnapper and imprisoner of children, the notorious Child Catcher. This greasy villain from the land of Vulgaria came to notoriety in the documentary film Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
An ocean separates these two terrors, and we must be grateful for this small blessing. For if these monsters should ever meet… No! It is too horrible to contemplate!
Continue reading “Penny Catch by Marco Etheridge”
The line of people stretched all the way around the block. It was 1983, it was Rome, and Mr. Castano’s sculpture work was in high demand for movie sets, fashionistas, and pranksters. The artist also reserved a certain amount of his time to help the injured or disabled with realistic or artistic prosthetics. I was a customer close to this latter category, though the only person I wanted to look right for was myself.
Continue reading “Pinocchio’s Puppet by L.A. Fields (Adult content)”
Considered objectively, Alan wasn’t really one of the bad guys. Provided it didn’t cost him significant quantities of time and/or cash, he was okay about helping out unfortunate relatives, friends, or neighbours. He had a soft spot for rough sleepers, as long as they weren’t hallucinating. He claimed, with some justice, that when he was working he’d worn a hole in the arse of a perfectly good suit sitting on committees, but he remained willing to do the odd shift of volunteering here and there.
Continue reading “The Lingering Regrets by Michael Bloor”
