The kid sneaks in here every day, which is crazy because I’ve done my best to keep him out of my store. It wouldn’t be the first time a guitar, fiddle or banjo walked off. Kid likes to slide in while I’m with a customer talking trade or repair, head straight for the vintage instruments in the back room, get down the 1924 Gibson A-4 and start messing around.
Continue reading “McKenzie and Sons by Ed Davis”
An autumn evening, 1950
Along the Grand River, Ontario, Canada
Yes, sir, she’s a mighty fine mansion. And an unusual style for this neck of the woods. Looks a bit like a bank to me with that porch and pillars. The first owner built her back in 1845. She doesn’t get the attention she deserves these days. You can see that by the peeling paint and the boarded-up window. The brothers don’t live here full time now, but they do come down on occasion. Separately, always. That’s why they have the wife and me looking after the place as caretakers. We live in the house and keep an eye on things. The two brothers don’t speak to each other anymore. They send messages through me. They haven’t talked since the blowup they had over the repairs to the roof.
Continue reading “Not For Sale by Guylaine Spencer”
Growing up as a Nigerian meant that your parents filled your head with all sorts of supernatural phenomena. When we were children, my mother would tell us these euphoric stories, a lot of which kept us up all night, like they kept a lot of other kids around us up at night as they too were being told these stories in their own homes.
Continue reading “The Monster at the end of this Tale by Mohammed Babajide Mohammed”
Tonight, there was a man in my room. He appeared when I turned out the lights. He wasn’t there before. And then he was. Crouched at the foot of my bed. Smiling
It’s just his white eyes. His dark pupils. Always looking at me. His teeth are glowing in a big smile as he stares at me. The whites of his eyes pronouncing the void of his pupils as their darkness looks unblinkingly at me. Ready to welcome me into bed.
Continue reading “The Smiling Man at the Foot of My Bed by Noah Love”
“I won’t talk about the past anymore,” she said. “I’m only talking about what will happen from now on. I’m using this pain to make something wonderful.”
He held her hand, like he had so many times. Her masculine hands. Creative hands for making wonderful things. Like her saddest smile.
Continue reading “Doll Parts by Ximena Escobar”
It is far too quiet for a room with two people, a room where the brush of bare feet on wooden floorboards struggles to fill the air. A room where dim, flickering shadows writhe unbidden across the wall, called forth by a candle sputtering futilely in the corner. It is the silence of empty air where people ought to be, and the bar is fully brimming with it.
Continue reading ” The Girl Who Does Not Exist by Kaela Li”
“Have you spoken to him too?” the man asked.
“Huh?” The boy didn’t even take his eyes off his comic book, only putting it down to quickly light a cigarette. “To that old guy? Yeah.”
Continue reading “A Choice, Through Time by Anatoly Radimir”
The old woman would still be alive if she had just stayed inside.
Stefan clawed at his sweat-soaked blanket. She haunted him every night. Damned locals. It was their own fault. If they didn’t sabotage the supply lines, the soldiers wouldn’t need to requisition food from the villagers. Requisition. Steal. Stefan didn’t care. He was hungry. Her farm looked abandoned. The doors on the dilapidated barn came off the hinges with little more than a pull. Inside there were an emaciated cow, two goats and a few chickens. Pathetic. Stefan balked when Ivan ordered him to search the attic—he was sure to break his neck if the stairs collapsed. But orders were orders. One bag of wormy grain. Wasted effort.
Continue reading “Hunger by Shawn Eichman”
Dimac looked again and the white house at the end of the lane was pale yellow. He tried to find a simile, then a metaphor, and was lost in the miracle before him. The change had happened in the blink of his eyes, and it unnerved him so that he closed his eyes, waited for the white shingles to settle back into place, become their proper selves, as if he could say that about shingles, and opened his eyes.
Continue reading “The White House at the End of the Lane by Tom Sheehan”
The morning is cold and dark and quiet. The roads are nearly empty, strange for a Monday, even at this early hour. Victor Fetter watches the clouds, purple against the leaden sky, while he listens to the familiar rattle inside his mail truck. He thinks the clouds look like rain, and he is pleased. Rain means fewer people, fewer eyes, fewer conversations. He can go about his business with his head down, without fear of interruption, the way he likes.
Continue reading “Follow by R B Miner”
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