In the marketplace, a couple of miles from my military base, a brown-skinned indigenous woman was walking with such grace and a mischievous face that she caught my eye, slowed my walk, and reversed my direction.
Continue reading “Beast of Burden by Frederick K Foote”
The parking lot was empty. But that wasn’t unusual, partly because it was midnight and partly because, since the sparkling new Saver General came to town, Dan Burns’s General Merchandiser rarely had any customers anymore. Dan learned with dread the coming of the Saver General and he knew that, slow or fast, the death of his store was probably imminent. Before he had closed up earlier that evening, he stood looking out the front door onto the empty lot. It was getting cold. Winter was certainly coming and in a high desert climate it would be dry and cold for months. Dan didn’t mind that too much. In the not-so-distant past, the chill would keep the townspeople coming in for heaters, batteries, warm socks, and hatchets to break icy ponds so livestock could drink. Now the cold seemed to make things more desolate and hopeless. Dan turned from the front door and left out the back to his truck. At least the truck was paid for. That would help him survive a bit longer. Probably.
Continue reading “A Whale of a Time by Kelly Hossaini”
Emily’s in bed one night, brooding about her manager’s warning that Emily’s too aggressive, and thinking if she was a man, she’d be called ambitious, when there’s a puff of smoke, and an elf appears.
Continue reading “Emily Follows the Elf by Ed Kratz”
The bones spoke to Angelina the way other women heard gossip over garden fences. Snake vertebrae whispered of rain coming from the east. Coyote teeth predicted claim jumpers and cattle thieves. But it was the human bones that spoke loudest, and those she kept hidden beneath her floorboards, wrapped in red silk stolen from a dead Chinese merchant’s shop. Each bundle reminded her of her own lost child, the daughter whose bones she’d never found to read.
Continue reading “The Bone Reader of Tucson by Dana Wall”
My father used to tell me, ‘One day, my sweet, King Arthur will return to save the kingdom from peril, and all will be right again.’ Clasping blankets up to my chin in the dim twilight of a bedroom lit only by the light in the hallway, I’d drift off to sleep, dreaming of the mighty King’s return. There was a location of his reappearance too – Cadbury Castle – though when I went there in my preteen years, I was sad to find no castle. Any evidence beyond the mounds and ditches of prehistoric civilisation had gone, and nothing sparkled enough to grasp my interest. Despite this, I hoped for his return. A wish, like believing in the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, that this being, just this one mythical being, would be real.
Continue reading “King Arthur Is Dead by Kathryn Hatchett”
On Sunday! See you on Sunday! I await you all. He called out, his voice brimming with unrestrained cheer.
What’s happening on Sunday? Someone would ask him with a mocking smile.
Continue reading “The Man with The Frozen Clock by Georgia Xanthopoulou “
What happened was, I died.
Daddy ripped out my heart, despite Mama telling him not to. They even sent me away, buried me somewhere else.
Then Papa Nos found me.
Continue reading “Papa Nos by Debbie Paterson”
You’ve probably heard about this already, but one day some kids dug up an enormous pacifier, and in doing so pretty much brought chaos into the world. Apparently the kids were playing in the strip of woods by Route 42, just poking sticks in the embankment there, no thoughts of upsetting nesting bees, preventing future mudslides, or their moms having to pretreat their laundry stains afterward. Because where the dirt fell away, they uncovered something that shouldn’t have been there. A large, old, manmade hoop.
Continue reading “The Enormous Pacifier by Alice Kinerk”
I once shared a cell with a con from Detroit named Marty Ballantine. He had a blazing shock of red hair and was tall and looked more like an ex-basketball player than the head of accounting until his firm realized he was skimming. He had a young girlfriend on the side, an expensive marriage and mortgage, and combined with greed, he got caught. Big surprise. I couldn’t really picture him in a blue suit and red tie, slaving away at debits and credits. But his orange jumpsuit went well with his red hair.
Continue reading “Killing Time by Michael Loyd Gray”
My wife was born invisible, but she told me that it’s only at my high school reunion that she feels invisible.
A small percentage of Americans are born invisible each year. Naturally, this number is very hard to track.
Continue reading “Low Visibility by Matt Harrison”
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