Danny got to Average Joe’s early. Ten o’clock. Before Bobby. Before he lost his nerve.
Maybe ten people there, a couple along the bar, a few at the tables. A geezer sat on a stool near the door, with a cop’s buzzcut and a hard stare. A baseball bat leaned against the wall.
Continue reading “No Moon In January by Joe Mallon”
Peggy Garrett must have been glad that Geary’s had given up on the old way and got a ramp fitted. For years I’d watched her lump poor Jim up the step, the wheels catching on the threshold, before she’d lean forward to see to him, like a magpie claiming a crust. She, always in black with her wispy hair that had turned white the night of the accident.
Continue reading “Baby’s Breath by Leanne Simmons”
If I’m born again as a man instead of as a woman, I will aim the silly-looking mushroom waggling between my legs and shoot my stream so it splashes dead center in the toilet bowl. Bullseye! Bango! How hard can that be?
Continue reading “The Second Husband by Cris Aboobaker”
I have no music in my soul. A man told me that once, full of conviction. No real anger in him, but definitely judgment. I sentenced him to twenty-five years in the penitentiary, and he was back before me on a Rule 35 (b) motion for reconsideration, which I denied. He stood at the defense table in his baggy orange prison-transport jumper, his wrists and ankles shackled, and he grinned at me, biting and cold, a man with nothing left to lose.
Continue reading “Judge Me by Ace Boggess”
“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.”
—Stephen Fry
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Author’s note: My good friend, Sean, had repurposed an old decanter that once held Johnny Walker scotch, whose label he had steamed off and replaced with one of his own design. On the new label he had printed: CONVO-LOTION. In fine print, it announced: “Good for what ails you. Apply liberally.” If only those words had proven to be true.
Continue reading “Thirty Eight Special by Robert Kruger”
The big man filled the doorway of The Smack Inn, blocking out the insistent daylight. ‘Samuel Root?’ he boomed into the gloom.
A wiry little figure leapt up from a table in the depths of the room and scurried forward, hand outstretched. ‘Ned Polley?’ The other grunted. ‘Welcome. How was the journey?’
‘Long. Hard on the arse.’
‘Ale will see to that.’ Root waved and slopping tankards appeared. ‘Parents well?’
‘Mother same as ever. Father won’t see fifty again but good for a few years yet.’
‘Sorry about your uncle.’
‘Took me an age to read your letter.’
Continue reading “Blow, Bonny Breeze by Stephen Silvester”
“I reckon that lass Lyra or Lula or something was well into me, I got her number, I might get lucky later this week if I can see her again”, Kyle smiled, slapping his closest friend on the shoulder.
“Yeah and pigs might fly! Catch you Monday Kyle”.
Continue reading “Spice of Life and Death by M Bridger”
I went to high school with a girl named Michelle “Mick” Kleinschmidt. Mick looked as far removed from Kleinschmidtiness as you can imagine. Her father was an American of German ancestry and her mother (whom Mick strongly resembled) was a Filipina. Mick’s parents met and were married in Manila. He was in the Navy and brought Mrs. K to live in the United States. Bremerton, Washington is a Navy town, and after Mick’s father was honorably discharged he landed a job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. This is very common in this part of the world and continues to happen to this very day. (For the first time ever, while I worked on base, I met a female Ensign who brought her Filipino husband home to America.)
Continue reading “Week 595: Who’s On Your Wall and a New Feature”
By Chancellorsville, his camera had grown heavier, the straps of its leather case cutting into his shoulders, the sway of its brass and wood bruising his ribs. Among the war dead he had photographed, he lacked one, his sister, Ana, who had died two years earlier in a field hospital outside Fredericksburg. Fever, they’d said. By the time he found her name in a ledger, no body was left to claim.
Continue reading “Ana in the Negative by R W Owen”
A homeless man is lying across the railroad tracks. A green bicycle is parked sideways on the rocks. “What the hell is this,” I say to Jonny. We’re grinding along the parallel lines in an old beater I just bought last night.
“Helluva deal,” says Jonny, smiling, then he gives him a little toast, and takes a big gurgling gulp of Budweiser, and belches from deep in his stomach. A beery cheeseburger and onions drift towards me. “Look’s like he’s homeless…” then he says, “Homes.”
Around town you might see this homeless man or his twin, sometimes they’re female (they all look alike in their dirty Carhartt’s), pumping their bike or shopping cart from trash can to trash can sorting out spaghetti-sauced aluminum GOLD.
Continue reading “Fire Eating by Christopher Ananias”
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