“Boy, you better have your black ass down here tonight, or your ass is grass, nigger. You hear me, Ellis?”
That’s my main man, Mac Brown, the Big Sound from Downtown. He got a right to be pissed. A month ago, I missed our best bud, Willa Wright’s art show. My demons kicked in the day of the show. I don’t know why. I woke up 600 miles from home, in a hooker’s trailer, with no wallet, no money, no phone.
Ten-year-old Josh walked to school on an already hot May morning. The bulldozers roared and pushed along the river, clearing the bush and the cottonwood trees for new condo development. Josh’s skinny white pony-tailed neighbour, landlord Glaser Neil called out from his yard “hey, take a look at this,” and Josh stopped. Neil often acquired odd things. Odd but interesting. Neil pointed behind his lilac bush. Josh looked over and smelled the lilacs. Glaser motioned for Josh to come in, and the boy opened the gate and peered at the back of a cage. “What’s in there?” he asked. He heard a growl.
Continue reading “Child at the Edge of the Wilderness by Harrison Kim”
She was the last one to move in. Most people moved in the day the builders handed the keys over, but her house stayed empty for a couple of weeks. She was renting which probably explains it. We still don’t actually know who owns the place, even after everything that’s happened.
A jutting, brick-walled affair, we’d moved into our one-bed flat three weeks ago. It wasn’t much – first time buys never are.
But it was something. It was our space; it was home.
Chris leaned his head against the bus window. He was tired but he couldn’t let himself even doze as that would turn into deep, much-needed sleep.
Leila has braved the darkness, the dankness, the drippiness for us – down in the nether regions where the scary stories go to plot and plan. She pushed this one into a bag and brought it into the light. This is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Last Lost Eye by Marco Etheridge”
And here we are at Week 285.
It’s interesting reading some of the introductions that we receive in the initial emails.
Before I moan too much, at least these folks do acknowledge that we are out there.
I’m not saying that anyone exaggerates but some of the plaudits some of our unsuccessful submitters have are extraordinary.
1.
It was put through the front door. Put through that brass trimmed rectangle small enough to keep out the worlds. The letterbox is far outside. I do not go to it. In the space under the door and online necessary links are maintained. But this package is different. It is not an invoice to pay or a manuscript to edit. George has pushed it into a corner with her nose.
He had a long chunk of writing tattooed on his skin. It looked like Greek or Chinese or something. He said it was ‘so I never forget’.
‘But it’s over your shoulder,’ I blurted. His shoulder was massive, like a pig carcass.
He looked at me like he wanted to kill me. ‘It’s back to front so I can read it in a mirror,’ he said at last. I never found out what the words meant. But he taught me lots of other things.
“Right Israelites…Where are they?”
“Only me boss. Do you like my frock?”
“It’s very fetching. And who are you?”
“I’m Charlton, the rest of them seen the smoke in the distance and thought there was a fire heading this way. I mean they’ve just got dried from the sea thingy, miracle, whatever the fuck.”
“The sea parted, it never touched them.”
“I know but they’d all pissed themselves. They’re not very brave. Anyway they fucked off home, wherever that is.”
Continue reading “The Ten Commandments by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content”
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