Release is real. These days there aren’t many left who’ll deny that. We’ve all had our glimpses. Maybe you caught someone’s eye at a bus stop in the rain, and when they smiled back it was like something heavy tearing loose inside you. You felt the future drain away through your fingertips. Not your future, the future.
Continue reading “A Latecomer’s Guide to Release by Greg Golley”
Ancient starlight is a key ingredient in Magick. Forget sunshine; aged roughly eight minutes upon arriving at Earth, it’s too raw and is to starlight what prison wine is to hundred-year-old cognac. And culling the rays that bounce back off something like Saturn only adds a few meaningless hours to the photons. Yes, the older the better, all the way from Deneb and Andromeda, Rigel and Beteguese, the maniacal red-shifted glimmers that howl silently through the endless now, the insane shine of forever.
Continue reading “For Whom the Elm Toad by Leila Allison”
Michael Bloor is a regular contributor and commentator on the site. When we received this piece we were amused and entertained. It’s clever and witty. However, we do realise that stories about writers can have limited appeal and so we thought a Sunday Whatever was the place to put it. Too good to miss so here we go:
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Authorship Down by Michael Bloor
I awoke, sprawled on the beach like a dead starfish in the morning sun. A hand gently raised my head and an old-fashioned enamel cup with a black-lined rim was laid beside my lips. My tongue was swollen and my throat was dry as cat litter. I drank and squinted up at my benefactor, a shimmering shadow haloed by the sun: ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Authorship Down by Michael Bloor”
Mr. Randall prided himself on his ability to imagine a person in animal form, a technique he furtively employed, quite frequently it turns out, when he suspected the person might be smarter than him. This method reduced the individual into someone easier to deal with. As such, the small, long-necked man interviewing him from behind the desk in his bowtie and buttoned cardigan was perceived to be a bureaucratic turtle. The image, however, caused Randall to stew in disappointment. He had expected something more for his money—something out of The Sopranos—maybe a gorilla, or a bear. And that wasn’t all. Turtle-man’s office reeked of potpourri, for high on the wall a plastic dispenser spat out a staccato “phft,” and just about the time he forgot its annoying existence, it would “phft” again—signaling the imminent descent of chemical lavender.
Continue reading “Button by Joe Manion”
“Mommy! Mommy!”
As the summer sun neared the horizon on this longest day, the heat of late June only fading slowly, Ann drew fingers through her dark hair, trying to work out the beginnings of a tangle. I should just cut it short, she thought. Everyone else my age does.
Continue reading “Night Stranger by Torger Vedeler”
I’ll ask, are you ready? and she won’t hear me the first time. She’ll be busy wrestling the damp residue out of her clothes, cursing the dryer for its indolence.
I’ll ask again.
Are you ready?
Continue reading “End in Sight by Tyler Wilkerson”
Warning – Content that some readers may find upsetting – refer to tags on the bottom of the page
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What do you say to a person who tells you, when they get one of those shivers-running-up-and-down-the-spine feelings, that not only is someone really walking across their grave but that they can tell who it is …? Well, I can state for the record that what you absolutely do not do is laugh. I learned that the hard way. So, when he sat bolt upright in his armchair, rolling his shoulders and glaring at me as if it were somehow all my fault, I knew better than to look up from my ironing.
Continue reading “Grave Stepping by Steven French”
The zen master sat on his tatami mat in the spare, spacious chamber of the temple. His eyes were half closed as he sat, deep in zazen, at one with everything. He became aware that he was at one with the universe and then realized that that awareness was a concept and that was an illusion. He took a took a deep breath, breathing in the universe. Then he exhaled. And thus he was at oneness again.
Continue reading “The Zen Master and the Genie by Rick Sherman”
The day Clancy started school, a girl pointed at her head, and hooted, ‘You’ve got no eyebrows.’ When Clancy went home, she looked in the mirror and wondered why she hadn’t noticed her missing eyebrows before. Next morning, she borrowed her mother’s eyebrow pencil and drew two thick black arches where her eyebrows should be. When she walked in the door of her classroom the teacher told her to go outside. She followed Clancy out the door, pointed to the pencilled arches and told her to go to the washroom and rub them off. Clancy scrubbed hard and wondered if she’d also rubbed off the few remaining blonde hairs that were pretending to be eyebrows.
Continue reading “Sweet Pea and His Tiny Stony Heart by Sandra Arnold”
Dan Bonner used his right hand to toss two keys to the moss-covered forest floor of Happy Valley Forest. The keys lay there glinting among the twigs and dead leaves. The throw sealed his purpose, to set his mind and body free from chance. He stood naked, one foot and one wrist handcuffed to a birch trunk. The forest stood so thick here, he could barely see the sky. That was the way he liked it, all the empty blue blocked so he could focus on the shade around him.
Continue reading “By the Beautiful Pond by Harrison Kim”
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