All Stories, General Fiction

Minute by Robert Reece

That goddamn Buick screamed around the corner with its rusted chrome hubcaps shooting off like flying saucers from Plan 9 from Outer Space. Talia’s face and her yellow whiskey eyes came to me in that frozen millisecond like an old 3D image in a ViewMaster. I can’t remember what she said when she left me the night before, but there were those eyes from the day we met four years ago, and that’s what I saw as the tires smoked skidwild across the asphalt, and the cracked tri-shield hood ornament narrowed down as a laser reticle focused on its target, which was me. But I was late because Talia took the alarm with her when she left, and I had to take the commuter train, which was delayed that morning by a single minute due to a signal malfunction.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Day Like Any Other by Danielle Rhodes

Today will be like any other day. You’ll softly snooze the alarm clock as it sounds, just over an hour before your train pulls into the station. You will feel the groggy effects of sleeping fitfully, as has become the norm. Pressing snooze, you tell yourself you’ll get up on the first alarm tomorrow, already knowing you won’t.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Sorting Apples by Ann Marie Potter

“One of his girls, the youngest I think, got killed by that thing a few years back. Got her scarf caught and strangled.” Like many of her father’s words, poorly formed and slick with alcohol, these came with a belch.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Swerve by Tamara Barrett

Q never swerved to avoid a beast on the road – dead or alive. He would drive through it with an iron fist, as if fur and soft tissue were nothing. A mental illustration of focus, a kind of road karate like the art of board breaking. Always direct your power beyond the wood stack. A fox, a kangaroo – he had a bull bar and was not squeamish about death – an emu once near Broken Hill, had snapped a rabbit’s neck.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tiverton Southbound by Matthew Roy Davey

‘Tiredness can kill. Take a break.’

The sign expanded, glowing in the beam of headlamps, and was gone.

The lights in the darkness were beginning to blur; the flecks of winding taillights, the flickering ribbon of the lane markers, merging to one. He put on some Iron Maiden to drown the hum of the engine and lowered the window for an inrush of air. The icy blast stopped him yawning. He blinked and leaned forwards.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rebirth by Martin Toman

John coiled the rope thirteen times around itself to form the hangknot. The ridges of the knot felt strong, almost muscular, in his hands. John knew his knots. Working on farms will make you an expert in practically anything, or anything practical. He slid the noose open and held it at arm’s length, looked at it carefully: it’ll serve.

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