All Stories, General Fiction

Generative/ Iterative/Evaluative by J. Bradley Minnick 

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These are the last days and unfinished pages of a dissertation on Pragmatics and Features of Sex, 1998—Beth says—expected by her committee members in two weeks, or at-most, a month. Her defense is in three weeks, but she doesn’t think she’ll finish. She says she’d happily quit and work in a bank or in a mall selling perfume behind shiny counters—spritzing the stuff on eligible men who will buy it from her with hopes of getting laid. She says even if she quits, she will continue her work, untethered and uncriticized and make her own study of the language of love, its features through natural conversations, speech acts, implicatures, while managing the flow of reference and the theories of the mind. Then, Beth pauses. But it’s still too big, she says. It’s always too big.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Memoir.by Kristen A. Schmitt

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When I started putting the words on the page, I didn’t know what it was. An exercise in letting go. A reflection of memories. A way to make myself understand what it was, what I had been through. I never thought of the consequences, of letting anyone else read what I had written.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Colours by Amanda L. Wright

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There are at least a dozen memorable lines in Amanda L. Wright’s Colours. The main thing that sticks with me is the lament (and I paraphrase) that if they had gone to war to protect the British way of life, then the war was lost long ago.

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Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 401: A Dirty Slate; Welcome to YES-vember and What’s On Your Wonderwall?

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Tableau de rasa is Latin for “a clean slate.” In philosophy it describes the unmuddled mind of infancy, which is soon spoiled by life. I was once one of those overly polite people who’d write “As you know…” or something equally cagey before sneakily defining a term that I figured maybe only half the readers already know. This of course presents an unwinnable situation for the polite person. I have always seen condescending people as jerks while patronizing types are smiling jerks. In my mind you cannot patronize without being condescending but you can condescend without being patronizing. So, if anyone out there smells either on my breath I apologize, but it might be an aid to know that I consider condescension slightly less rotten than patronization.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Sea by P O’Connor

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The loose hall board, if you rocked heel to toe, sounded like someone drowning, that bastard son-in-law he hoped. He tried to silence him with new copper nails along its length. For a while it worked. But one evening the gasp returns, quieter now, pitched high. His weighted heel brings his wife, grasping a breath before sinking under a swirling sea. His toe raises her sea-washed face and she gasps again; help me, John, I have her.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction

The Eternal Bob by Lewis Braham

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Bob the same backwards and forwards existed. In every universe in an upholstered mustard colored armchair watching the Eagles who were no goddamn good and why did they ever let that guy Michael Vick be their quarterback? In the Farrago quadrant, 34th century, he was known as the constant and studied in advanced quantum mechanics classes, but was unknown to lesser beings in our 21st.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Liza, Like Lizard by Joy Florentine

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She’s like a storm cloud drifting my way. The thick, grey coat and bright yellow rain boots are probably a choice she made herself, because the sun’s out and I’m sweating like a pig. I don’t understand why Lenny would let her go out like that, but I don’t have kids and won’t pretend to understand what it’s like. I guess my only comparison to dressing a child is when Roger, my Rottweiler, comes running to me with his lead between his teeth because he wants to go to the park, and he’s got only that one lead. I guess I shouldn’t call a dog my kid, but all he wants is to eat, play, sleep, and shit. Roger’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a kid—which I’m perfectly fine with.

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All Stories, Fantasy

A Better Bargain by Matthew Ross

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Whoah, lad! Stand easy there—I just want to talk. It’d be that poxy old wizard that sent you in here then, eh? Well, he may treat you like a fool who just fell off the turnip cart, but I’ll shoot you straight—I’ve no reason not to. No doubt he snatched you out of whatever backwater town you hail from because you’ve a drop or two of old Edern Dawnblaze’s blood in you, and he knows as well as I that only a Dawnblaze can seal me up inside this cave for another thousand years.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Under Threat of Salvation by Marco Etheridge

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I’m out on the far edges when the Gelic pounces out of nowhere like they always do. She snatches my lapels with ivory clean hands, pulls her smiling face close, breath clean as death, asking me throaty-voiced did I know my very own personal saviour.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Perry by Dianne Willems

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Dianne Willems’ Perry begins as a daydream that edges in and out of a nightmare reality, and ultimately ends with the ultimate sacrifice. It is a tragedy because life is determined to be a black comedy. Life is loaded with easily discouraged, jaded Superheroes, but very few Perrys. The piece ends the only way it could, yet you never see it coming.

Q: Do you believe that the well meaning You Are Special message, without explaining how everyone can be special, without negating the definition, drives young minds into hopelessness almost as effectively as a poor home life?

Q: I see something Christlike about the Parrot, how his martyrdom brought the flabby heroes back into shape. Do you agree?

Leila

Dianne’s responses

Q: Do you believe that the well meaning You Are Special message, without explaining how everyone can be special, without negating the definition, drives young minds into hopelessness almost as effectively as a poor home life?

Q1: I am less familiar with the ‘You Are Special’ message (I think it’s a cultural thing, here in the Netherlands there’s more of a calvinistic attitude), but I have some thoughts about the ambitious ‘aim for the stars’/’be the best’ message some people try to install in their children. However, regarding the Parrot, I think he is more about trying to gain some control over a chaotic life. And being a hero, because his family did the exact opposite of installing in him the ‘aim for the stars’ OR ‘you are special’ attitude. So he tried extra hard, regardless of cost, to be someone special. 

Q: I see something Christlike about the Parrot, how his martyrdom brought the flabby heroes back into shape. Do you agree?

Q2: Having grown up in an almost completely atheist environment I haven’t nearly enough knowledge about Jesus to have drawn this parallel. However, I think the question should be, did the Parrot bring the flabby heroes back into shape? Or was that one last desperate fantasy as he lay dying?