6:47
Clint’s sleeping body takes a breath, stretches and rolls over. The large man wearing a white coat scribbles notes on his pad while the dim sunrise light peeks through the window. Clint’s body rolls back to its original position. The white coat checks his watch and then checks off a box on his notepad.
Dressed in mourning suits, they listened to the minister as he read out the eulogy. My name is Benjamin Carmichael and at fifty-two years old this was my funeral. To me, it seemed surreal as if floating around in a euphoric haze viewing my coffin draped in the clan tartan shawl and adorned with white lilies. Peeping through a small gap I could see the faces of the congregation and by their demure I sensed an impatient acceptance. Were they saddened by the tale of a tragic loss as imposed on them by the monotonous voice of the minister or were they merely bored by the ritual? Surely, this was the day they had been expecting for years and eventually their long suffering would be over. Soon, the body would be cremated to ash and the soul free to flutter heavenly in a plume of white smoke, and they will be able to continue their lives free from guilty retributions.
The ache my father left fled one day when I wasn’t paying attention. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t bury him. We couldn’t afford priority shipping so after a thirty year absence he arrived via USPS, on a Saturday morning, in a box sealed with tape that read “human remains” in blue block letters. I didn’t know they made tape for marking the packages of dead people. I didn’t know they put the incinerated bodies into a plastic bag inside of the box. It was dark grey and heat sealed as if someone had manufactured what was returned to us. I didn’t know that human remains were so heavy, or that when you lift a box containing the dead you’re acutely aware that this is something you once longed for; that this as close as you will ever again get.
“My father, Franz Josef Schennach, was a gendarme, Hauptmann, in Tirol. After the Nazi took over, he had to prove that he was Arian. He could not prove this,” Anna Stenson said. She looked across the room from her chair.
“Brown eyes go to Africa… They taunted me. At school. Only the blue eyes would stay in Europe, if Hitler won. I was hoping he would not,” she said adjusting the hem of her skirt.
Continue reading “Swords Hanging on the Walls by Richard Mark Glover”
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.”
literally stories 