I’d just walked into the office and hadn’t had time to set my coffee down when Vicki stuck her head in and said, “HR wants you to call them, it’s about Jack.”
“Is he here?” I replied.
“In his cubicle, talking to Eileen.”
Continue reading “Jack’s Back by David Thomas Peacock”
Tuesday morning and I’m driving. It’s cold outside and the windscreen is cloudy. I can see only through the little circle I have made by wiping my gloved hand against the glass. The circle keeps closing up, the world keeps getting smaller. There is nobody on the streets and the sky is low, the only motion outside the steaming shapes of stranger’s cars, indistinct forms defined against the grey by their movement.
Continue reading “This Winter by Louie Richmond”
My mother’s cadence on the bike has always been impressive. She can seamlessly glide from first gear to third without breaking her stride. The sound of her chain effortlessly shifting sounds like fingers snapping a melody. We ride together on a winding dirt road. We are going incredibly fast considering her mountain bike is a heavy beast. The tires are wide and fat. But it is a cheerful red color. It is the color of tricycles and little wagons. Though she is only thirty-six, it is odd to see her on something that calls to youth.
Especially since she is dying as we ride.
Continue reading “Always Remember to Shift by Jessica R. Clem”
‘And all of this is replicated across twenty datacenters.’
With a flourish, Davide draws a large rectangle around the messy, sprawling diagram he’s drawn on the whiteboard. He turns around. ‘Any questions?’
Continue reading “Boundless Growth by Simo Tchokni”
I sterilize an empty room. Wipe away scents of lavender perfume and kisses. Curse kids speeding on golf carts, runners pushing limits, horns blaring.
Continue reading “Limits by Yashar Seyedbagheri”
In the whole of Riverside Cemetery this was the one stone that had slipped its mooring, leaned not forward into the new millennium, but backward, into the one passed by mere years ago, as if saying it was tired of all the holding on. In one instant the scribed name was home with me: Dumont Pulsifier, an old pal from my neighborhood, but everybody, including his mother and his dead father while he was here, had called him “Scratch.”
Continue reading “Scratch by Tom Sheehan”
Three months have passed since the death of my wife. It has been a long summer, hot and unbearable. My only solace is knowing that it will be my last. I sweat incessantly. Others thrive in the sickly heat. Oh, that the rain would rinse the smiles from their faces. I keep my ghastly body hidden from the outside. Sometimes I cough. Recently more and more. But I rarely dwell on this. Hacking out a thick wad I get on with my business of living and dying. It is all I know.
Continue reading “Summer Nightsweats by Shane O’Neill”
A Cookie and A Glass of Milk
(A version of this story was first published in the Santa Barbara Literary Review)
Continue reading “A Cookie and a Glass of Milk by Shira Musicant”
“Men are gold, and women are white cloth. Gold, once sullied, can be cleaned and polished, while white cloth, once soiled and torn, can never be clean again.”
Khmer proverb
Continue reading “Haunt Me Like You Hate Me by Alex Sinclair”
When we received this work we were undecided what to do with it. We knew that we wanted to publish such a powerful and emotional piece of writing but, in fairness, it isn’t what we would normally class as a story. I will be honest and say that it moved me to tears.
Anyway, fate took a hand. We were scheduling this week at the time and when better to publish this than Remembrance Day.
literally stories 