All Stories, General Fiction

Carried by Yash Seyedbagheri

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The coffee shop with the sunshine walls closes. The skies are dark with charcoal-colored clouds. Home looms, Nick’s thesis waiting to be formatted with precision. Half inch margins flush with some part of the page or another. Overdue credit card bills demand their due. Graduation looms.

There’s no more time to sit and absorb laughter and dirty jokes. No time to watch undergraduates and senior citizens move with ease and a devil-may-care attitude.

The world awaits.

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Short Fiction

This Old House by Tom Sheehan

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For history and legend sakes, certain attributes, character traits if you will, have to be appointed here at the beginning of This old house (B. 1742), home for more than a half century of my life. To start off with, to walk these stairs, up or down, a signal for day or evening in the heart of an otherwise silence, is to hear sassy children underfoot. They are the underlings of square nails stretching their might, hanging on for more than two and a half centuries worth of treads and risers and hand-hewn stringers.

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All Stories, Short Fiction

Week 327: Twenty-six Ways to Weave Your Drunkard

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Everything is offensive. There’s no plainer way to put it. There is no topic that can be brought up that is universally inoffensive.

“What about a box of cute newborn puppies?” A voice in my head asked, when I first conceived the opening paragraph.

“Gotta do better than that head voice,” I said. “Try to fight this: ‘Cute, but that breed shits on the floor, no matter how hard you teach ‘em not to. How dare you rekindle that memory.’”

“Okay. How about World Peace and True Love? Surely no one can complain about them,” my head voice said; for it was a stubborn head voice that needed to be smacked on the nose more than once.

“Munitions manufacturers will find something wrong with the first and the second does not exist. Go away, head voice.”

Case closed.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Human Condition by Monika R. Martyn

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In life, everyone knows a version of Dave. Dave is the sort of man who is never any good with the ladies. Sure—he can joke with them at arm’s length, the innocuous touch on the shoulder, the forearm. And because a sprig of humor always plays on his lips, he smiles most of the time. He also suffers from a continuous string of good manners and never fails to hold doors open for the ladies, and flatters them on new sweaters and haircuts. Without crossing into hashtag territory, he comforts them when they confide in him.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Empty Histories by Yash Seyedbagheri

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At the coffee shop, all the tables are full, both the rectangular tables and the smaller square ones. People fill each side, hunched over computers and stacks of notes. There are boyfriends and girlfriends in turd-colored hoodies and skimpy white tank-tops, parents and children dissecting fractions and Abraham Lincoln, laughter, hugs, shoving, F-bombs deployed with cheer, fusillades of life fired into my ears.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Horror

Mother by Josh Walker

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My mother always liked the idea of being queen. I think that’s why I hated her so much.

Though she believed we lived in a palace our home was modest and our garden was, to my delight, unruly. She wore clothes she couldn’t afford, stained with perfumes so sweet they made me feel sick. Her king had left her and she had no other children. Her only kingdom was me.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

In For a Penny, In For a Pound by David Thomas Peacock

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You find meaning where you make it, I thought, polishing off my second bourbon and getting up to leave. I’d stopped by Puffy’s after an early piano gig, hoping to take the edge off before heading home. I couldn’t stop thinking about the old man —always worrying about him, continually reframing the narrative in my mind. I’m grateful for the time I have left with him was the best I could come up with.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Cohort Retirees by Tom Sheehan

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Each Raytheon retiree’s email, each contact with an old co-worker, though distant, departed, an accidental approach, brings me back to places, offices, plant sections and locations, that I left in my past and where I find those that never let go, holding on with clever clutches; some of my favorite people ever climb back into my present circumstance, letting me know they do not let go, not easily, not knowingly, not without a sidewise look I can remember as if it was sent my way yesterday.

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