My doorknob is low. The door is regular-sized, just upside down. But I know that can’t be true because the windows are up top. So my new theory has been that the door was sawed off, like a shotgun. The point is my doorknob is lower than most and is demonstrative of what’s inside: a very small apartment. Or, as I like to call it, “My hallway by the sea.” Because I live in a beach town.
Continue reading “Scarf in the Dark by Crockett Doob”
Today, the monster steps into the world. Today, unhooded, he is seen.
He has done this for many years now, ever since he began to understand the possibilities Halloween offers him. For one night, the town is transformed, becomes a wonderland of the ghoulish and grotesque. A town made for him.
Continue reading “The Monster And The Boy by Jaime Gill “
“You got old early.”
Hannah didn’t need to finish the thought. She’d already said it so many times, and then, when she got tired of saying it, she left. But even when she came back to pick up this or that, she sometimes would say it again, maybe for old time’s sake. “You got old early when you lost your job and started spending your days getting way too wrapped up in the neighbors’ business.” I never had a good response, even though clearly I had plenty of time to come up with one.
Continue reading “Your Grief Doesn’t Interest Me by Simon Nadel”
The cup of coffee had gone cold days ago. The first gulp of it had indicated that but the second gulp confirmed that the coffee was not only cold but old, still Gene takes a third sip. How long would it be before she could make fresh coffee again? It would require standing up from the television and letting this little shit win.
Continue reading “Old and Cold by Rachel Sievers”
Before we went inside, Christian and I sipped on some coffee he had ordered at Starbucks and conversed in his car.
“She was livid,” Christian said. “Slammed the window wiper on the windshield and busted a headlight with her boot.”
“Because you invalidate Otherkins?”
“Yeah.”
“But she’s okay with you being a Trump supporter?”
“Yeah,” Christian laughed.
He knew I found ways to drop in his affiliation with conservatism and right-wing politics. It excited me to be wanted by someone that simultaneously hated me.
Continue reading “The Freakshow by Athena Vasquez – Adult Content”
I feel like a stranger on the bus. Getting on at the airport, the bus makes the long trip into the city, picking up workers, university students, school children, and Janice.
Janice was seated near the front of the bus and as each person got onto the bus and made their way past the driver, looking for a seat, Janice made eye contact with them. And before they could look away, not wanting to engage, she sprang her question at them.
“Are you looking forward to Christmas?”
Continue reading “Are you looking forward to Christmas? By Penelope Jackson”
Willie Ferguson lay staring at the wee cracks in his bedroom ceiling. Like a lot of people, he hadn’t realised, til he stopped working, that he was missing something. It sure as hell wasn’t the job that he missed: he’d collected his pension with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t family either: his sister, Margaret, living behind a privet hedge down in England, was emphatically a distant relative, and should ever remain so. But Willie knew he really was missing something.
Continue reading “Searching for Unicorns by Michael Bloor”
Sometimes I go to Mordialloc pier to watch people fish. I never fish myself. I hate the smell and getting my fingers sticky with bait and having to watch behind you to make sure you don’t snag anyone with the hook and permanently blind them. But I like watching. Interesting things happen when you watch for long enough. Nothing of the adventurous kind. Just odd, amusing things squeezed between stretches of monotony. I am then assured that my life will, at the very least, be filled with amusing details if I care to look. I don’t hope for adventure anymore. The feeling I get when I return home from one is dreadful. I’d like no more of them.
Continue reading “Mordialloc Pier by Matthew Lee”
Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
The particles of snow, barely visible at first, thickened as the day wore on.
The nuisance of having to leave the comfort of home was tempered by the childlike effervescence triggered in me by this the first snowfall of the season.
Continue reading “Reunion – A miniature by O Chŏnghǔi”
The balconies had been intended as a benevolent gesture. One in particular has become a joke and a curse.
Continue reading “The Bellowing Bells by Billy Stanton”
literally stories 