One night in a cramped office I was contemplating suicide while entering food prices into a restaurant database. I’m a manager and my neck and lower back were throbbing and aching. Scroll, click, type. My eyes felt like they were bleeding. Someone knocked on the door.
Continue reading “Can I Still Work One Day a Week by J W Kash”
Aleppo, Syria (AP) — Prior to joining the Tawheed Brigade in opposition to the Syrian government, Anwar Addat was a computer technician who never gave much thought to politics or religion. That was before a barrel bomb delivered by a government helicopter ignited a fire that killed his wife and two children. These days he goes nowhere without his AK-47 and body armor, and looks every bit the insurgent warrior he has reluctantly become.
He sits at Anna’s bedside, unnoticed, working a crossword puzzle. Sometimes reading. Sometimes just waiting. Watching. Counting breaths until it’s time for him to do his job. Anna knows He’s here. She’s been expecting him.
Even though she cannot speak, I can hear her words to him, “I’ve been waiting for you,” Anna says. Her eyes are closed but she sees him. “Why are you taking so long? I’ve been ready for a while now.”
There’s a wrinkle of land in Stone County, an isolated pocket valley so remote you can hardly find the sky. My wife Sarah and I were happy there. A nearly feral cat lived there too, a scruffy calico that hung around to avoid coyotes. Sarah called her Josie. That cat was neurotic, delusional, paranoid and pathologically afraid of me though I never gave her cause. For three years all I ever saw was a flash of motion or the tip of her tail disappearing around a corner. The exception was anytime my wife ventured outside. Josie would glare death at me and sidle by on stiff legs, back arched and tail fluffed, to get to Sarah’s lap. I didn’t resent it. Sarah could talk tadpoles from a puddle, chant clouds from the sky, charm ticks from a mule’s hide. She surely charmed that cat, and the cat was good for Sarah. I’d leave them to practice their healing magics on each other and go find something useful to do.
Continue reading “Chasing Josie’s Ghost by Domenic diCiacca”
Dear Big John and Little John and Billy and Hughie and Londo and Eddie Mac and Breda and Kujawski and the comrade I carried to his death whose name I never knew and all the others I pray for every night yet, the men of the 31st Infantry Regiment;
Every reading I’ve done for more than sixty-five years simply begins this way: John Maciag was all bone, knees, elbows and jaw, hated his rifle, proficient at killing, wanted home so badly it burned his soul. We leaned up that mountain near Yangu, frightened. War’s hurricane tore our ranks, trees of us lifted by roots. I came running down three days later. Like cordwood the bodies were piled between two stakes, all Korean but that jaw of John Maciag I saw, a log of birch among the pine. The sergeant yelled to move on. I said no, maybe never. I am going to sit and think about John Maciag’s forever, whose fuel he is, what the flames of him will light. Perhaps he will burn the glory of man or God.
I meet my celebrity client, Edmond C. Mayhew, IV in the City Jail Interview Room Seven. Mr. Mayhew has the rugged, handsome look of an athlete/movie star even in his baggy prison orange. He appears confident, a little tense and a bit annoyed to find himself in his current predicament.
“Mr. Mayhew, I’m—”
“I know who you are, Tecumseh H. Douglass, the legal magician who swoops in and brings the bright glory of victory to the most dismal and darkest moments of despair. It’s truly my pleasure to meet you, especially under these circumstances.”
“Isn’t this place just perfect?”
Jan was talking to herself as she wandered around her new home. He hadn’t moved from the lounge.
No! It isn’t. It’s fucking yours! Your house! Your money bought the fucking house! Yours!! Everything is yours!! It will always be yours! God!! I FUCKING HATE THIS!!!
His thought induced tantrum died down. He took a breath and thought of puppies. Eddie liked puppies.
“Paula! Come in! Sit down beside your old Granny Lizzie… I want to tell you some things.”
“Another one of your stories gran? Are you not too tired?”
“Tired? Not now. I’ll be dead soon, so even if I wanted to sleep, I’ve not got the time. You need to hear this.”
“’Don’t move’? ‘Stay put’? Best mark thy lollipop-hole, Mouthy Munchkin, lest I break a ruby slipper off in your—”
Last Words, Wicked Witch of the East (Harriet Shelby’s Epitaph)
Continue reading “The Crossed Star of Bethlehem by Irene Allison”
‘I was found with a waitress in a cocktail bar… That much is true.’
Continue reading “Phil’s Lament by Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
literally stories 