“Everyone is going to stare. Don’t make eye contact or speak to anyone. They’ll ask for money.”
“What about family?”
They’re even worse. Just look mean.”
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Tag: family
The Great Escape by Frederick K Foote
I do it on a cold December day in Oakland, California. I sign the papers and pass the physical. In three days, I will belong to the United States Air Force, my freedom from her and her freedom from me.
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Full Circle by Soidenet Gue
The thirty-four days of my mother and father’s divorce felt like thirty-four excruciating weeks. It felt even longer on weekends, depending on what sort of breakfasts I shared with my mother at the dining table, all alone in utter, galling silence. One of her chief concerns at the beginning was my curriculum, then came my appetite. “Are you okay, son?” she would ask from time to time. I proved to be a lot tougher than she had realized. Meanwhile, the ten-pound weight loss she had suffered thus far to her own detriment appeared in full display from her cheekbones to her stomach. She would water the indoor snake plants several times on her days off if I failed to remind her not to repeat this process. I had to deal with the most critical ingredients missing from her once-palatable recipes.
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Literary Imitations and Good Mental Health by Michael Bloor
It’s an April Sunday afternoon, the long, wet, cold winter has not yet relented. Alan sits staring at the blank email on his laptop. He’s meant to be sending a newsy update message to his brother in New Zealand. The rain splatters against the window. His brother was wanting him to come to New Zealand on holiday. Apparently, there’s a beach on the Coromandel peninsula where a hot water spring bubbles up through the sand: you could dig yourself your own hot tub, and sit there watching the tide roll in…
No fuckin’ chance of the Coromandel peninsula this year, bro.
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At the Barn in Winter by Michael Barrington
She was asleep now, her head leaning on his outstretched arm, her delicate, dainty fingers finally relaxing their grip on his huge, calloused hand. The musky scent of her beautiful, long hair, she was so proud of it, stirred up old memories of happier times. He knew every inch of her face, her lovely, big brown eyes that always seemed so full of wonderment, her delicate lips…. He was afraid to move for fear of awakening her, but he needed to relieve his numbing arm. And to do so quickly before being forced to make some abrupt movement that might disturb her. It was pitch black…. He mustn’t turn on the light.
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Heir by Sam Graveney
Samuel Waggoner never used his own products. People admired that about him; Waggoner’s Wigs were so good, had he used them, no one would ever have known. An Australian, he fought in Vietnam and emerged from the jungles with a secret ingredient that turned dried-out hair from barbers’ floors into manes which shone like honey and lasted and lasted. He built a wig empire, became a rich man, he married a stage actress, Harriet, for love, he bought a big house outside Darwin. He was totally bald.
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Lizzie by Richard Hulse
As the hot afternoon ticked by, Lizzie thought they wouldn’t show. Then, far off, a vehicle coming down that dusty road. A car, not a truck.
It got closer and the passenger door was opening even before it stopped. Then Charlene was out and running to Lizzie, and Lizzie, she was jumping straight into her big cousin’s smile. Both of Charlene’s hands were on either side of Lizzie’s face.
‘Oh, I’ve missed you!’ said Charlene. ‘You been all right, baby? Have you?’
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Alterations by JD Clapp
I was looking out the front window, watching the snow fall, waiting for the mailman to come with my disability check. Jesus, the snow is sticking now, and my tires are bald. I needed to deposit that check today. I was out of food, running low on whiskey, and I still owed Mrs. Schmidt half the rent for this little shithole of a duplex. Fuck my life. Then, I got the call.
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Hannibal, Missouri by: Amber Bell
“Follow me,” a broad-shouldered woman wearing a name tag that said Deborah told Jade.
Jade followed her through a glass door, past a man working a register, and down a hall lined with half-open boxes.
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The Silver-Lined Ridge by Matthew J. Richardson
Fluttering canvas frames a view that has tugged at Ralph Nilsen’s dreams. The mountain is dark against the star-smeared sky, curved like a sickle, beckoning. Ralph permits himself a few moments to glance upwards, to watch the spindrift pluming across the Milky Way. Moments are all Ralph has. He will not be back, not for another season, not when he is within three hundred vertical metres…
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