There are facts as cool as gravity: If you drop a jam lid, it will fall jammy-side down. Humans make many myths. The guy who takes senior photos will be the single creepiest guy your senior has ever met.
Continue reading “Mind the Gap by Angela Townsend”
I’m talking with Mrs. Everton, the anorexic faced one-lung Grandmother puffing cigs by the wood stove as snow falls outside. She tells me more blizzards fell in years past, we’re not snowed in yet. She coughs, continues again in that smoky voice; my best friend Keith’s over by the fridge laughing with Lori Baker. Lori’s Mrs. Everton’s niece, black haired, pale faced, arms thin as branches stuck from a frost covered sapling, and fifteen years old.
Continue reading “What I Will Not Become by Harrison Kim”
Seo-woo lay flat on the floor of the shrine. He didn’t know what the g(x) was for equations f(x)=7-4x and f(g(x))=-1. He didn’t really want to because it was only fifteen minutes away from twelve. The four of them were supposed to arrive by noon. Pillowing his head on the book, he went to check their group chat for the fifth time in five minutes. It was quiet, which was good—no one was flaking. He was about to ask where they were staying again when he stopped himself. He’d already asked twice. They had chosen a cheap motel in the fishing village a few kilometers away from his place. They could have stayed at his temple, and he’d said as much, but they were determined not to bother his mom or the visitors.
Continue reading “Scholars of the Rocks by Yoon Chung”
“There’s a toll for everything…the toll for happiness is often sorrow.” — James Carr
Would you opt for a different life if you had the choice? This is the question I asked myself, a question so burning that it dampened my palms; it’s also the question I needed to ask my best friend, Charlie, because we both hated our lives—just as much as the guy who pulled up to my booth on that icy evening. Under the amber lights, his red Jaguar gleamed like a ruby. Decked out in a fancy camel-hair overcoat, he told me he was gonna jump off the bridge.
Continue reading “The Toll Collector by Jack Kamm”
He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting with her, which had been arranged for four o’clock. When in her presence, he felt he was under a malign spell. He would look at his feet or the ceiling, anywhere except at her face. When she was talking, the muscles in his face contorted into a sneer, over which he had no control. His replies became monosyllabic; his voice flat.
Continue reading “The Final Meeting by Ian Forth”
The summer I turned eleven the tiny fingers of creeks that ran off from the river went bone dry. It turned the red Georgia clay into a cracked mud, and the water line in the wells fell to a frightful low.
Continue reading “Scorched by River Jordan”
Underwater light flickers and dapples the sea floor, glowing through seaweed drifting in the current. Miles of sand undulate into shadow. The goggles bite hard into Colin’s cheekbones and behind his ears, but they do not leak. Colin swims deeper, releasing bubbles as he descends.
His chest tightens but the sand is close now. He stretches his fingers out.
Continue reading “Hold Your Breath by Sarah Macallister”
Darla pulled into the alley behind the bar and parked under the streetlight. Before she undid her seatbelt she sat in silence for a moment. She adjusted her rearview mirror and looked at her bloodshot eyes, the rims rubbed red from blotting tears. Over the two weeks since Joe Harrington dropped dead, Darla struggled as much with the prospect of her own future as much as her loss. The same thoughts ran over and over thumping her mind like a shoe in a dryer. I’m 64, I have no retirement savings, no real family. I need to keep working but my knees hurt all the time. How long can I keep this up? Her tiny self-chosen family had just lost their most stable member; she had lost her best friend and former lover. She took a make-up bag from her purse and went to work on her eyes.
Continue reading “Joe Harrington’s Wake by JD Clapp”
Seventeen-year-old Jackson hunched up tight against the school wall smoking and laughing to himself, waiting for the bus and coming out of a daydream about performing at Carnegie Hall. He noticed how brightly the dandelions bloomed on the sides of the culvert; the birch leaves fluttered above them. He stubbed out his cancer stick. His friend Robert P. hustled up, hauling a guitar stained dark brown with linseed oil.
Continue reading “Don’t Mess with Me by Harrison Kim”
The wild man sat in his lawn chair and tried to ignore the small boy lurking behind the shabby travel trailer. The chair was made from aluminum tubing and woven plastic webbing. The coarse webbing sometimes pinched the back of the wild man’s thighs, but he was accustomed to this. He’d owned the chair for a very long time. The sneaking little brat, however, was a new and unwelcome annoyance.
Continue reading “Frankie and the Wild Man by Marco Etheridge”
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