Tag: aging

All Stories, General Fiction

Down for the Count by Fred Vogel

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Calvin Allen and Leo ‘The Lip’ Grady were superstars in the world of boxing during the seventies. Their three fights against one another are legendary. Allen won the first bout with a TKO in the eighth. A year later, Grady would turn the tables with a fourth round knockout. But it was their rubber match that people still talk about today. It was the lanky, reserved, black man from New Jersey against the stocky, white, Irishman from Queens. The crowd was divided in their loyalties. Back and forth the two boxers went, bobbing and weaving, each landing devastating blows on the other. One would be knocked to the canvas and then the other. The sold-out arena was in a frenzy. It was the closest, most brutal, of their three meetings. Round after round it continued, with neither fighter giving an inch.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Path Home By Frederick K Foote

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Back in 1949 or 1950 when I was six or seven, my grandfather took me on my first trip on ‘the Slave Road,’ ‘the Hidden Highway,’ ‘the Nigger Byway,’ ‘the Devil’s Footpath,’ or ‘the River Styx Trail.’ All these names and more for a narrow, dark path, a little over a half-mile long, that saved almost a mile and a half between our farm and Corn Row Road. The “Row” was a dirt road, where our black friends and relatives lived.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Have Another by C.M. Pratt

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Liam paces the floor of his “study” which is a bedroom in the home that he and his wife Eileen are renting.   The new addition screams its head off.  He wishes the thing would shut up.  Not the thing.  That’s terrible.  The girl.  The baby.  They cry constantly, babies.  They cry because they’re infants, then they cry because they’re teething, then they cry because they’re in the ‘terrible twos.’  It seems different names for the same dreadful screeching.  He has no idea why anyone would have a baby.  He has no idea how he ended up with one.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Fatherland by Alan Gerstle

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My friends thought it was a big deal that I was flying out to Los Angeles for a call back on a film. I had the initial audition when the director was in New York. A month later, he called to see if I was still interested. I was. I didn’t have anything else going on. The trip would also give me a chance to visit my father. I hadn’t seen him in years.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Posterior Rugae by Paul Strong

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The whole thing about bum cracks and manual workers is derided only by people who don’t work hard, physically, and by younger people, thinner people. Alec didn’t care what people thought, what stuff looked like, what was falling apart or falling down as long as it did the job. It’s as much as he could do to pick himself up after bending down to fiddle with something. He picked up, pulled up what he could, when he could. He was at the stage where he had to prioritise physical effort in a very task specific way. After hours, years of hard labour, his time was spent just getting done, anything else was superfluous. It wasn’t giving up, it was getting by. Continue reading “Posterior Rugae by Paul Strong” →

All Stories, General Fiction

Nor Help For Pain by Leila Allison

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Some see the aging face as an ongoing story; others see it as a palimpsest from which the original pretty story has been scraped and is continuously replaced by increasingly derivative tales culled from the same source. Here, I find myself thinking Hamlet compared to Hamlet Versus Predator: To Bleed or Not to Bleed.  Sadly, as you may plainly see, no metaphor holds up after you have looked at it long enough.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Still Here by Melanie Haws

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Wipe off my chin. Please. There is a handkerchief in my pocket. That’s the way I was raised. Get it out and wipe the drool off. Now. And look at me when you talk to me, the way you used to, when we were first married. I’m still here, you know, I’m still here. The older the violin, the sweeter the music. My mother fiddled. I remember the feel of her gloved hand in mine one afternoon, walking me down Market Street, when she stopped and gasped, There’s your daddy. I looked across the street at the man watching us, and he didn’t seem at all a father to me. Only another guy on the street. I squeezed my mother’s hand and we walked quickly in the other direction. I did not look back. I was eight then. I cannot remember the sound of my mother’s voice, or when she passed, but I know that she is gone.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Louder You Scream by Martyn Clayton

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Every girl loves a showman reckoned Big Micky Taverne.

Stand behind their car as the waltzer takes a group of them up and down. Watch as they huddle up, heads rested on shoulders, screaming in unison. One if not all will be giving you the glad eye, willing you on. Come on they’re saying, give us a spin. So, you do and they scream so loud it would burst your eardrums if they weren’t already bust from the music.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Thelma and Addie by Kathryn Lord

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“Jeesily H Christ, son of a bitch,” Addie muttered, not exactly under her breath, as she jockeyed her walker through the maze in the dining room. Why’d they have to cram so many goddamn tables into here, I can’t imagine. Heading for an empty one, she banged her walker into a chair, threatening to send both flying, pulled out another, aimed her butt in the general direction, and plonked into the seat with a thud.  Sometimes she pushed out a loud fart on the way down, just for the fun of it.

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