“Ahhh.” The palm reader sighed heavily. Such was his power that we all exhaled lightly with him, and then leaned forward to hear what would come next.
Tag: loss
Johnny and Frankie by Nancy Robinette
One thousand and three green squares from one end to the other. Lime green squares, match the lime green jello, match the lime green curtains, match the lime green creamed peas. You get the picture. I’m sure the nurses wonder why I wheel slowly up and down the corridor. It’s the number. One thousand and three. Where’s the symmetry in that? I demand order, discipline. So I count again. To confirm. You wouldn’t think that such a detail would matter in the grand scheme of things, but these days, that’s about as grand as my days get. I enjoy uniformity. Regimentation. Forty years in the military will do that to you. “Career Army” they used to call me. Married to Uncle Sam. I wonder how Lorna felt about that.
My Powdered Friend by David Henson
A few months ago I bought a box of My Powdered Friend, dumped the contents into a bathtub of water, sloshed it around, and went to bed. The next morning I woke up, and there was Steve.
Liquid Memory by Christopher Dehon
I pulled up to the 7/11 and realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ordered an Icee. I mixed Coke and Strawberry into the biggest cup they had. I remembered when Cheyenne and I were in middle school how we used to mix this with the vodka her mom never bothered to lock up. The girl behind the counter looked like she’d recently graduated from high school, although she held herself with a toughness beyond her years. She’d either shrunk her uniform shirt on purpose or lied about her size, because I could see her belly button ring on her washboard stomach. I looked at the half-eaten nachos behind her and figured she only had a few more years to look like this. She didn’t ask where I was going or where I’d come from. When she handed me my change, I noticed the frenzy of old cuts on her left arm. These weren’t those superficial, privileged, symmetrical cuts girls in my high school had. These were frantic and left her arm looking like an old cutting board. These were the cuts that you get when your uncle’s bent you over a couch for a year and no one believes you. I thought about giving her a hundred dollar bill to impress her. I could tell her where I was headed. She’d be touched and give me her number, and then…what? I threw a pack of Cheyenne’s brand of smokes on the counter, paid with a twenty, and left.
A Witness by Dyaus Rai
Jim sat in the living room with his gun on the coffee table staring at the wall. He had just locked her in his bedroom and was contemplating his next move.
The Middle by Steven Colori
“I don’t have a lot of friends,” I reminded myself. The cold and warm fronts were colliding in the sky which was colored with moving clouds, yellows, grays, and shades of purple. Darkness was falling as I was driving.
Between First and Final Breaths by Kathryn H. Ross
The first thing Miguel became aware of was the blistering sun on his cracked lips. He could feel the great white eye of the earth staring at him, taunting him to fully wake and confirm that his recurrent nightmare had once again followed him into morning. He opened his eyes and blinked slowly, taking in the brilliantly white-washed blue of the sky. It was day five. He felt death in his bones.
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The Scene at Scott’s Mill by Tom Sheehan
Old Scott’s Mill had given off odd sounds since the day it closed down. Now it gave off a sense of passage.
Borrowed Fragments by Vince Barry
“. . . ?”
How can you help? Hmm, how can you—
“. . . ?”
My mother? . . . Okay, we can start there. . . . My mother—my mother came from a large family, a very large Irish Catholic family. Do they make them any more? I think not. . . . At any rate, as a boy, a young boy, no more than eight or nine, I would employ the template of the Baltimore Catechism to sort them out and keep them straight—the Faheys I mean . . .The catechism’s set formula, y’see, helped me convey the essential and fundamental content of the Fahey family. Beginning—
Crawfish Prayers by G.A. Shepard
Tommy lay in the middle of the train tracks looking down between the railroad ties. It was fifty-feet to the shallow river that ran underneath the trestle. A low growl made the wood and metal shudder.
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