“This didn’t happen when we were in school.”
“That’s true, honey, it didn’t.”
“I just don’t get why now all of a sudden – wait, why do you? – you don’t have to sound so patronizing.”
“I’m just listening, honestly.” She changes from her robe into scrubs, loose fitting and dark purple as an eggplant. Her phone rings. She answers it on speaker. “Say hi to your father,” she says.
“Hi dad,” Lily says. “How’s the year so far?”
Continue reading “What Can Anyone Say by Matt Liebowitz”
Warning: Extreme content – see tags.
Running.
Gasping.
Retching, the son of Olayo Mejia charges toward his village amid the stench of burning wood and searing flesh. The odor is heavy and it is moist and it fills the valley beneath him in a haze of squalid yellows and heavy browns. It covers the fog-laced treetops and mingles across the terraced fields and, as gunfire again bursts over the Salvadoran hills, its reek grows sharper with every footfall and every wild swing of his arms. Its taste lingers in his mouth, its fumes choke his lungs and he wants so much to pause and catch his breath. He wants to fall to his knees and weep in terror but he knows he cannot, for the helicopters are prowling above him, the smoke is billowing high into the morning air and his home is very far away.
Continue reading “Chalatenango, 1983 by J. Paul Ross”
March was a bitter month for everyone involved. Jodi was born into one, like Eric Clapton, her childhood idol. In another March, thirty years ago, Clapton’s four-year-old son ran into a hole in the wall. The hole was supposed to be a window, but it had no glass on it. A scream tore through the house, and the mother understood right away that it didn’t come from the boy; the boy was busy plowing through the air, down fifty-three floors.
Continue reading “March by Sarp Sozdinler”
When Garf opened his refrigerator, he saw a jar of purple pickles beside the carton of expired milk. This was strange as, only yesterday, they were green. Garf stood in his itchy annoyance before the refrigerator, his red, black-striped robe hanging off his slumped body like an old, worn-out curtain.
Continue reading “Garf and the Purple Pickles by Landon Galliott”
“She was reckless and calculated. Sharp but dreamy. I think she was lost. Overcome by the world’s endless configurations.” A wave of chills swept over me. Papa was only eloquent when talking about her, so I tried to soak it all in–every syllable, hand gesture, intonation–to paint a picture of her in my head. Papa never even showed me photos, because as he said, “It’s in the past.” I had stored a few features such as angular nose and fair skin in my reservoir until then, but those were surface-level. I had been yearning for characteristics to vitalize the shell of a person in my head.
Continue reading “Remnants of a Silence by Saul Brauns”
He took a swing at me. I braced for impact as it battered my jaw.
Big mistake, I thought, as I got low, latched on, picked him up. Buddy laughed; guy was having fun with me. Fine. I spun around and took him down.
He snatched my beard, mashed his face into mine. I tore free, pinned his arms, prepared to strike. His feral eyes widened; he knew his fate.
I put my lips on his bare belly and blew. My son squealed and flailed, then stiffened and vibrated. Electrocuted by elation.
Continue reading “Death on Rotation by Brandon Nadeau”
The Lunar Landings—a lofty achievement for mankind. Today, 3 billion miles from Earth, two hundred years later, I’m passing Pluto. But only in the company of a doomed ghost ship named the Achilles. All fuel reserves and chances of returning home vanished with my crew.
Continue reading “Final Transmission by Savannah Oldham”
This piece is another work in translation from Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton. A glimpse of another culture but the lesson or message is, I believe, universal.
Continue reading “Auld Author”
Syd walked along the narrow path of flattened grass between the gravestones just like he always did. On his walk home from work, on his way to the shops, on lonely days couped up at home watching the rain pour down his window panes he came to the graveyard. He walked through the melancholy bluebells that lined its edges, past balloons tied to pristine headstones and sad teddies left in the middle of graves to keep the dead company until he got to Liam. To the black marble with his date of birth and death, the little line etched across the bottom of it that was meant to sum up his whole life. Who he was. What he was. But it couldn’t, it was too small. Too dull. It blended in with all the other messages on all the other graves but nothing about Liam had ever blended in.
Continue reading “Lonely Ghosts.by Rebecca Disley “
The Bardess house was in Aboyne Court, a group of maisonettes on the semi-derelict edge of the Tanshall estate off Aboyne Drive, a half-mile of semis under schedule of demolition. You’d to go up a dozen broken concrete steps to get to the tarmac path to the front door. It was one of the areas of Glenrothes popularly reputed to be a dumping ground for Fife Council, houses to put problem families, or challenging clients, as we in the social work department would prefer to describe them. The iron railings still stood there in front of a square of unkempt grass but were no longer connected to anything. Some kindly soul had thrown a car tyre onto the scrubby grass which had accumulated all kinds of rubbish; used pampers and newspapers blown on the wind and worse, lots of plastic cider bottles, anchored to a thicket of weed by dried-out dog turds. The building had no outer door and a cold wind whipped through the hall especially if the backdoor leading to the back greens had been left open. The front door was on the ground floor on the left where some altruist had scrawled in a heavy felt pen all along the wall Slag in among the usual spraypainted graffiti tags. There was no sound in the close, a smell of urine and I saw a dried stain against the wall. The glass panel on the door on the right had been replaced with plywood, the name J. Quinn handwritten in biro on a small patch of space between obscene graffiti. There was a musty smell of dog but no sound, no barking.
Continue reading “Last Refuge Andrew Murray Scott”
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