Sihanoukville began dressing itself in a fresh coating of sleaze just as the night bruised the evening’s amber face.
Its nocturnal denizens awakened bleary-eyed to crawl out of a thousand tacky rooms and flee the judgement of mirrors, desperate for another drink, another fix, another sordid five-dollar fuck.
Continue reading “Barang by Alex Sinclair”
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”
The two cats spoke as cats do, ears twitching, signaling, plotting, slowly inching forward one muscle at a time. This was no time for meows, purrs, or broken twigs. Something interesting jiggled in the deep grass, and they needed to get closer.
Continue reading “The Rule of Unintended Cataquences by Bob Freeman”
There weren’t many restaurants Harold still tolerated. Most were too crowded – like the buffet down the street which clearly had a busing arrangement with the local nursing home. Others were just too damn expensive. Harold also hated theme restaurants, anything cooked with cabbage, and food from countries that bordered the Mediterranean.
Continue reading “Just Desserts by Andrew Rodgers”
Anna sat quietly watching through the two-way window as the patrons marvelled at her paintings in the gallery below.
Everyone stopped at Vienna. The piece she kept in the old wooden chest with her sentimental collection.
Continue reading “Vienna by Karen Uttien”
This week’s whoever has been a wonderfully quirky and enthusiastic supporter of the site for a long time now. We first published Doug Hawley in 2016 and he has been with us submitting, reading, commenting, and generally getting in the way since then. Have a look at his back catalogue.
Continue reading “Sunday Whoever.”
The art form that had the biggest impact on my mind during childhood was TV cartoons. Yes, art form. And I will also say that cartoons were responsible for the stimulation of however much creativity I was endowed with.
Continue reading “Week 438: Raised by Cartoons”
When my wife falls asleep in the hospital, I write Brock on our newborn’s birth certificate then super glue his eyes shut. His hands arrive to this world calloused like he was lifting heavy objects for nine months.
Continue reading “Pocket Monsters (Blue Version) by Corey Miller”
Everyone needs to cry. Everyone needs to cry because it is not easy to live by simply breathing in this modern world. Everyone becomes upset by something, usually the smallest things that went wrong. Something that was out of their control, something that was not scheduled. An argument with a lover on the morning breakfast table. A sudden insult from a close friend that went too far and the thoughts following the insult going even further inside the mind. It’s the small things. Usually.
Continue reading “Half Moon Above Seoul Central Park by Yejun Chun”
Before my Hinge date I amuse myself by making faces in the mirror. I purse my mouth like an overripe strawberry, beckoning future rot. I slide oil through my hair, expensive oil that’s supposed to be very different from the grease that will seep through the roots after two days without a wash. A few minutes before sunset I slip on my combat boots and trendy trench coat and we’re out the door, me and the fragile home of my body.
Continue reading “Teeth by Amy Katherine DeBellis”
literally stories 