Toys
During my decade at Goodwill I had many jobs. I recall one fondly: Toy evaluation. It involved going through the massive amount of donated toys and separating the trash from the saleable.
Continue reading “518: Toys and If I’ve Hit Girls in Leotards Once I’ve Done it a Million Times”
“Mama said the feathers are my psychosis,” Ava says. Her gaze drifts away from me, down toward the red and blue dancing lights. I edge closer along the ledge. “Your ambulance looks like a toy from up here.” She picks at scabs covering her arms, with blood-encrusted fingernails.
Continue reading “Fledgling by Tammy Komoff”
Gramercy Tavern has been a New York City staple since the early nineties. With a spacious bar and wonderful food it has set the gold standard for what casual, fine dinning should be. The restaurant is more formal than the bar but the bar food is just as delicious. Although… the pace in the dining room is different, with the kitchen and the patrons performing a type of Kabuki Theater. The waitstaff, with just the right amount of reverence to the kitchen, serves exquisite dishes to a discerning clientele and in return that clientele pairs each course with the absolute best wine, hand selected by the Sommelier on duty. You ask for their opinion out of respect for the food and they never disappoint. And in the end all pay homage to the shrine of Meyer/Anthony. The only problem with the dining room? There is always a second seating and no matter how well you behave, eventually you will need to leave.
Continue reading “The Ring by Donna Slade”
Carmine stands silently beneath a mammoth black and white, chrome-framed photograph of a no-nosed beauty with a blunt cut in the back room of his salon. A pie slice of a building gilded in white wrought iron swirls, Mr. Carmine’s Beauty Palace stands between a pastel-colored dog grooming shop and a dimly lit deli/bookie-joint/pizzeria on a street corner in downtown Yonkers, New York. With yards of crushed velvet, flowing script lettering hand-painted on the double plate-glass doors and layers of gold leaf Mr. Carmine, himself, resides over the first, overstuffed, red velour chair. He sports an expensive, loose fitting khaki jumpsuit, and a pair of Italian, olive-green, eel skin loafers as he begins the day. Hazy sunshine filters through the mauve miniblinds as disconnected images fill his mind: business, past lovers, today. He sighs. He hears his first customer enter the shop.
Continue reading “Beyond the Bridges A Story by Susan Jennifer Polese”
Ed liked to blame the couch, though there was more to it, but that part didn’t help.
What Kaitlyn did, she went out and spent four thousand dollars on it, and then when they delivered the thing it didn’t fit in the elevator. Ed watched them try removing the little ceiling panel, which he didn’t even know came off, but even so they couldn’t angle it in.
Continue reading “Adverse Possession by Ted Gross”
The minister, at her desk between afternoon meetings, took up the next set of documents requiring her attention. Her usual practice, following that of all government ministers, was to read firstly the summary prepared by her civil servants. Only occasionally and in dire need, would she then read the full report. This did not signify any lack of diligence on her part. Indeed, the work of the Scottish Government would’ve shuddered to a halt if ministers had insisted on reading every document that crossed their desks from first page to last. But on this occasion, she read the summary and immediately then read the full report, re-reading some passages and asterisking two or three sentences. Uncharacteristically, she was then ten minutes late for her next meeting.
Continue reading “Crossing the Bridge with Thomas Tallis by Mick Bloor”
Without thinking, she started smoking the day he left, nearly thirty years ago. It was just something to do when he walked away. She constantly sat at the window, hoping, peering, and smoking. One cigarette lit from the other, with the smoke dragged deep into her lungs. Everyone said that was a bad thing to do, but she still smoked, and most of them had passed away. She kept her hand outside to let the smoke drift into the clouds and considered it a signal, a beacon he could follow home. The ash burned close and scarred her fingers, so little pain remained. The pain was all in her heart.
Continue reading “Patience by Ed N. White”
On those windswept weekday mornings, asphalt driveway crusted with snow, my father would get up early, put on his secondhand boots and an old coat, and exit through our front door into the blue hour to get the motor running. That fifteen-year-old station wagon would stall if not warmed up properly and might not start again. My father would sometimes have to push it down the hill to get the engine going, my younger brother Bill and I sitting quietly in the back seat, the smell of alcohol already on my father’s breath.
Continue reading “Those Snowy Mornings by Gil Hoy”
Young Toche, “the bird,” slight of stature and weighing no more than a bundle of palm leaves, was forever a dreamer. In his tiny village, deep in the jungles in Colombia, time moves slowly. He lived the life of his ancestors. Dinner came at the end of a spear, and fire and a thatch roof were luxuries. Modernity was yet to invade.
Continue reading “Little Green Men by Jason Abshire”
I screwed all the lightbulbs back in. There was nothing in the sockets — no hidden bugs or cameras — but the feeling that I was being watched stayed with me. I had combed my place thoroughly that morning, and everything seemed to be in the right spot. I even threw away my cell, and all my electronics had been unplugged for days. But I knew they were somehow monitoring me, and I could have missed something. I went to the window and stared down onto the street, debating whether or not to leave my apartment and hide among the passersby, blend in.
Continue reading “The Syndicate by David Gershan”
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