By Chancellorsville, his camera had grown heavier, the straps of its leather case cutting into his shoulders, the sway of its brass and wood bruising his ribs. Among the war dead he had photographed, he lacked one, his sister, Ana, who had died two years earlier in a field hospital outside Fredericksburg. Fever, they’d said. By the time he found her name in a ledger, no body was left to claim.
Continue reading “Ana in the Negative by R W Owen”
This is the first time we’ve made eye contact, but I’ve been looking at his face my entire life. I know those narrow, close-set eyes almost as well as my own. Eyes so blue they almost glow in direct light. Eyes I always had to turn away from because of the way they constantly laughed at me.
All these years, they’ve never stopped laughing at me.
Continue reading “Pissing Bullies by Rasmenia Massoud”
The rainbow-colored, balloon-patterned gift-wrapped box sat like an invitation atop the cement stoop. The ticking sound could be heard from the sidewalk. Barbie spied the thin wire paralleling the red ribbon, rising into the frothy, rosette bow on top. Barbie’s little plastic hand followed the wire to a fold in the paper, eased the wrapping open, sawed with care through the ribbon, and cut away the paper to reveal an edge-dinged box proclaiming the presence of a Spirograph Drawing Set. I really wanted one of those.
Barbie had spent enough time in the toy store to know the weight was all wrong. It was too heavy. She fearlessly sawed a hole into the side of the box, revealing wires, a wind-up alarm clock, and a small brick of tan, clay-like material. Enough to blow the whole city block sky high. With her steady fingers, she cut the green wires and, finally, the red wire to the detonator. She then flopped back into a sitting position and told me, “That was close.”
That was the first story I told Dolores, but you haven’t met her yet.
Continue reading “Bomb Defuser Barbie by Calla Gold”
I never liked the women that my father chased around like a puppy who’d lost his mother. Fat, short, abrasive, somehow saying more about the way he thought about himself. To me, my father was always a rock, stoic, a giving tree whose branches had been nearly hacked away by the axe of my self-indulgent, capricious, drug riddled mother. But once she went away— and I mean really went away. Locked away for so long that she’d be old and grey the next time she saw the light of day and breathed the air of the free. I’d always assumed my father would find someone that shared the same familial values as he. Not that my father was a religious fanatic, but rather he had a keen understanding that when a man becomes a father it’s that man’s responsibility to put his family first. Whether it was taking me to my grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve to open presents and eat cookies in the comfort of her love or holding my hand whenever I was sick and never leaving my side no matter how deep into the twilight we drifted. Perhaps that’s where his image of women came from, his mother. My grandmother, a woman who would wake up at 2am to get ice cream from the freezer and of course, offer me a bowl. A woman who sounded like a grizzly as she rumbled down the hallway towards her favorite closet— the fridge. Who’s that famous guy who said that all men only want to marry their mothers? I don’t know, but I think he may’ve been on to something.
Continue reading “Bon Appétit by Nicholas Starr Kellogg”
The father didn’t need to give the orders anymore ‒ the curtains were to be closed at four o’clock. Even if it was sunny. The boy blinked in the chilly shadow of the lounge and watched his father sink into his chair. The father sat where he always did: the single armchair by the hearth ‒ the deep-winged, plum one that blinkered him left and right. The boy sat opposite.
Continue reading “Should Be Seen and Not Heard by MJ Burns”
I stood alone at my stepmother’s funeral, fondling a plant, watching rain bead down the fogged window. The funeral parlor’s black walls, and black curtains were heavy-handed leaning too much on the death knell. Ten lines of bright red chairs clashed with a maroon carpet. The organ music droned like it always did—my whole life.
Continue reading “The Convert by Christopher Ananias”
Abdi barges into my craft room, without his glass eye. Which he knows I hate.
“Hey, Mom?” he says.
“Did that Zoom call already finish?” I ask. This homeschool group is such a jerkoff. Why do we even pay for it? I mean, I could teach him nothing by myself for free.
“I found this snowglobe eyeball online. It’s so cool. I could flip my head upside down and then…”
Continue reading “A Body Without Organs by Miles Efron”
There’s a smell, a humid kind of smell. Wet concrete—car fumes. A fire hydrant cracked open, cool water steaming on the New York July sidewalk. I remember because my feet were burning. Cool water on too warm concrete soles.
Continue reading “Bullfrog by S. M. Rosen”
Will stopped at the doorway of the small unkempt home, his hand grasping the door frame. He stood for a second, hesitating, before walking inside. His father had lived there for a few years before he died, but Will had only been inside the house a handful of times. The damp smell hit him as soon as he crossed the threshold. A solitary recliner sat in the corner of the living room. A TV guide perched on the arm. The place where he remembered his father the most. In front of the TV watching old shows, replying only in grunts when Will spoke to him.
Continue reading “The Painted Smile by Matthew Whistance”
Xius waved at the family driving away in their BMW M3—it had license plate frames from his cousin’s dealership—with their brand new Fénix rolled up and strapped to its roof. He locked his showroom’s front door, hit a switch, and the sign reading “New and Used Flying Carpets!” flickered out. Sighing as he tried to ignore the worn linoleum, and the faded map of the world, marked with places such as El Dorado, Xanadu, and St. Brigid’s Well, he gathered together his receipts—paperwork would take him about two hours, he figured. He smiled as he thought of his daughters nagging him to get a computer, but he didn’t see the point, now—he had been at this for almost forty years, and every day seemed as if it might be the last.
Continue reading “Xius and his Flying Carpet Emporium by Hermester Barrington”
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