One day, you look for money in your sister’s drawers and you discover something else completely. You started out the day Nick Botkin, sister of Nancy, son of Penelope. Now Penelope’s your grandmother and Nancy’s your mother.
Continue reading “Sister Mother by Yash Seyedbagheri”
I always thought that when it rains that means someone died. Funerals need rain like they need flowers or a priest or a rabbi or an imam.
It rained a lot that summer.
Continue reading “The Dying Disease by Elad Haber”
Hoors!
Dirty fucking hoors!!
Hoor-maisters…Dirty fucking hoor-maisters.
Clatty bastards the lot of them.
Continue reading “Do The Right Thing by Hugh Cron – Warning – Strong Adult Content”
“Time and tide wait for no man, buddy. You got to get up and get back on track.”
Coach Leif is kneeling beside me with a grin morphing into a smirk. I’m flat on my back courtesy of a blindside hit that has me seeing stars, hearing bells, and wondering if I’m paralyzed.
“Track? Was I on a track? What the fuck? I thought I got hit by a truck. What’s a truck doing on our track?”
“Come on. Get on up and shake it off, Urban.”
Continue reading “Urban Violence by Frederick K Foote”
Philosophy 101 saved my life. A weird thing to say, I know, but it’s mostly true. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that my sleazy professor taught me how to stay alive. Of course, that knowledge was passed on accidentally. Professor Tomlinson’s teaching methods consisted of smoking dope and trying to screw his female students, me included. Any actual learning was purely circumstantial.
Continue reading “Brought Down by Y by Marco Etheridge”
“But why, Gran, why does everybody have to die?” He was only eight and it wasn’t like the idea was news to him. But it wasn’t something he thought much about until it got personal.
She only shrugged, advanced one of her checker pieces. “Pay attention.”
Continue reading “Gameday with Gran by Shawn Nocher”
“Can I kiss you?” he had asked, staring down at her in that affable, yet intimidating, way.
Ilsa often thought about what might have happened had she responded differently, or if Abigail hadn’t walked in just moments later. She even wondered sometimes if she had heard him correctly. He had said it so softly it was hard to tell. But knowing what she knew now, it made sense, in a terrible, messed up sort of way.
Continue reading “So Many Girls in Leotards by Clarisse Gamblin”
It is early, the first cool, unflinching rays just touching the rocky outcrops above the house, damp drags of fog still clinging to the bottom of the little valley. The air is fresh and dewy, it smells of wet grass and earth and pines. Quite beautiful really, but also eerie and very still.
Continue reading “Transformation by Silke Katja Roch”
She said she saw angels, and repeated it, so I did too, but I still haven’t grasped what it means.
I climb onto my bed, above the covers, and I gaze at the ceiling, yearning to comprehend it. This gray and dirty ceiling has hovered my whole life, floating above my bed. Built before I arrived, still standing after I’ve gone. Untouched, unchanged. Can I imagine a life without its ever-presence?
Continue reading “The Ceiling by Charlie Rogers”
There were men and women throughout the library reading books. A librarian wearing a sweater over her shoulders sat at a desk organizing a stacks of three by five index cards. A young man sat at a table, his face visible behind two columns of heavy, academic tomes. He held his finger up to his lips in the universal sign of “Ssshhh!”
Continue reading “Book Stuff by Ryan Priest”
literally stories 