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”
Ashley Lefey had seven outfits, a different colour for each day of the week. She’d developed the system whilst interning at Facebook, inspired by Mark Zuckerberg’s famous elimination of small unnecessary decisions. Unlike Zuckerberg, her wardrobe routine didn’t condemn her to a life of monastic grey t-shirts.
Continue reading “Fortune’s Gambit by Ed Dearnley”
I’m well aware there are endless possibilities, limitless universes where people live rather than die, where situations work out rather than fall apart, where superb memories are made rather than never created, and where love blossoms rather than weakens. I’m unsure how to reach these complex destinations, but I know they’re out there, situated somewhere on a higher dimension or hidden behind the veil we call reality. They conceal all the could-have-beens, circumstances that might have occurred if given the opportunity but, of course, never came to fruition due to some seen or unseen event…
Continue reading “The Could-Have-Beens by Mason Yates”
Patrick Mulcahy awoke with a start after a night of fitful sleep. It was Monday, October 23, and this was the week he would die. On Thursday, October 28, at 3p.m., Patrick Mulcahy, 62 years and six months, would depart this life.
This doleful fact had come to him in a dream, but Pat had always had a knack for prediction, especially for death. He wasn’t a shaman or a mystic, but his gift was prediction. This made many people wary of him, but others flocked to him for predictions about sports, elections, and even the weather.
Being certain of the time and day of his death had its advantages, because it happened soon enough for Pat to enjoy a full life. His work as an actuarial consultant furnished him with both ample time and income, and Pat visited every major league ballpark in the United States. He went to spring training for his beloved Red Sox every spring, and even went to Cuba for the historic game in 2016, as a guest of David Ortiz.
Continue reading “Requiescat in Pace by Bill Huey”
If she hadn’t looked at her phone at the exact moment she was crossing the road she would have…
Continue reading “A Game of Consequences by Sandra Arnold”
He is standing in a dark place, his own name forgotten, and no memory of how any of this came to be. The man blinks his eyes, senses he is not alone, then sees a shadow figure appearing in front of him. A creature coalesces out of the darkness.
Continue reading “Architects of Their Own by Marco Etheridge”
The tip of the shovel had talked to him with a dull thud, not just through his ears, but totally. It came into his hands and up the stiffness of his arms, through the quick riot of nerves on red alert, through all passageways of recognition. It was wood! At its tip was wood, a cavernous wood, a chesty wood, an enclosing wood. Promise poised itself, much like awards’ night and names to be named. Light leaped at his back, behind his head. Down through the awesome sky of darkness he could feel a star draining, down through thirty-five years of a hole.
Continue reading “Just Plain Hard Work of Ages, Work of Comets by Tom Sheehan”
The conversation had gone all the way around the corner and came back to death, or getting there, Prince having the floor and saying, “I had a friend just north of Boston.” That’s how he started, a simple opener, the way he does it, with natural pauses built in and a pass at saying he was familiar with Elizabeth Bishop’s poems. Hell, we knew that from similar discussions.
The Year You Were Born:
Your mother leaned forward in an aluminum lawn chair, scrunched her toes into the grass as the hot wind blew waves through her summer dress. She took another fleshy bite of watermelon and let her eyes slide closed as she savored the cool sweetness that filled her mouth. Your dad sat at the picnic table drinking a can of beer. He cupped a match from the breeze and lit a cigarette, and when your mother leaned forward, he stole a glimpse of her swollen breasts through his exhale.
literally stories 