Tag: family

General Fiction, Short Fiction

Maisonette by Hugh Cron – Warning Strong language and Adult content.

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Life has hammered me.

I take another drink and lean over my balcony.

Balcony, that’s a fuckin’ laugh, it’s the breadth of my two feet and the stink from that clatty bastard two doors down makes me gag. They’ve a wee Jack Russell that they allow to shit on the balcony instead of taking him a walk. The wee soul needs to climb up a shit mountain to take another shit. When he’s having a crap I can look him in the fucking eyes.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Step Right Up by David Lohrey

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My cousin Boxie returned from Afghanistan to say that people turn into pink mist when they are blown to smithereens. Boxie spends his days shelving toilet paper at Costco, making $37,000 a year. He bought a house for $109,000 and leases a Chevy SUV. He has a daughter but his wife can no longer bear children. They live near Pearl, Mississippi. They keep a Boxer chained to the tree in their back yard. Boxie won’t let his wife cook instant rice. She shaves her pussy. Their daughter, Esther, wants to be a fireman. She wears a helmet to bed. Boxie, Tricia, and Esther belong to the Church of Proximate Causes, a sect based on the worship of reality, an internet group of survivalists who live somewhere in North Dakota. People say, they keep tons of deodorant in their basement along with cans of ravioli and Mississippi tamales.

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All Stories, General Fiction

My Plea For Solitude by Harrison Kim

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Right out of high school after Dad died I inherited eighteen acres down the road from Mom’s house.   Raye,  who I now call “The Old Crow”  married me quick after that.  I started building for our great future.  I framed the house around and over top of the trailer, then took the inside trailer wall out.  We trucked in water from Mom’s place.  My friend Elton and I constructed the septic tank, a fifty gallon drum with pipe holes at both ends, pushed down in a rocky hole.  My brother Jackson helped lift the roof trusses. My life pinnacle topped there, Raye and I bouncing on the bed by the wood stove, sex and drink and rock and roll in the custom made residence,  and then came three kids, Raye and my mighty sperm created them two girls and a boy.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Sisterhood of Nod by Leila Allison

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A Day in the Life of 1987

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Ever since it was installed in 1951, the carillon atop the Charleston city courthouse plays a piece of classical music after it chimes noon. On a day long since protected by the statute of limitations, I was waiting out a red light in front of the courthouse when the carillon played the Chopin nocturne featured in The Deer Hunter. Maybe I’ve reached the age where my cultural references are “out of print,” but there’s a special sadness in that melody which always sinks me; yet on that day, when I was twenty-eight, I felt nothing at all.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Sister Mother by Yash Seyedbagheri

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One day, you look for money in your sister’s drawers and you discover something else completely. You started out the day Nick Botkin, sister of Nancy, son of Penelope. Now Penelope’s your grandmother and Nancy’s your mother.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Ceiling by Charlie Rogers

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She said she saw angels, and repeated it, so I did too, but I still haven’t grasped what it means.

I climb onto my bed, above the covers, and I gaze at the ceiling, yearning to comprehend it. This gray and dirty ceiling has hovered my whole life, floating above my bed. Built before I arrived, still standing after I’ve gone. Untouched, unchanged. Can I imagine a life without its ever-presence?

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All Stories, General Fiction

Bathroom Throne by Yashar Seyedbagheri

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Dad locked my sister Nan and me in the bathroom when he had girlfriends over. This was always late at night, after his shift at Bavo’s Bar. He thought Mother would have taken us when she left. I was twelve and Nan fifteen.

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All Stories, Horror

George and the Horse by Jazeen Hollings

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Huddled in the dark, the three children shook at the sight of the black horse. It’s head, bashed in from madness, left a bloody smear along the splintered barn wall. It’s body was too still on the dusty floor. For Walter, the blond-haired boy of four, it was just a rigid, mountainous shadow. It frightened him to watch the beast, the devil and his illness finally take hold of the animal. The silence that followed that was unbearable, unclear. Walter felt that something was very wrong but his innocence would not allow him to understand the stillness of the mare. As his unease grew, consuming his little heart, he buried his head into his older sister’s arms for relief.

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