The D train doors closed just as Sammy stepped onto the platform of the West 4th Street station. Slightly miffed, he was nevertheless glad to be out of the January cold. He removed his pipe from the pocket of his overcoat, filled the bowl with loose tobacco, tamped it down into a wad, and lit it with a strike anywhere match he ran across the metal No Smoking sign on the station wall.
Continue reading “The Doppler Effect by Mark Russ”
There are two types of nurses: the ones who believe in ghosts, and the ones who are lying.
We don’t talk about it much, especially now that the war is over. You can feel it more than see it when we’re together—a collective haunting, invisible guests at the dinner table. The conversations lulls and our gazes drift and we stare at strangers we’ve seen somewhere before. Was it the operating table? A hospital bed? The morgue?
You do this kind of thing for years and eventually everyone becomes a ghost of someone, somewhere. We don’t talk about it much.
But sometimes we get drunk.
Continue reading “The Magician of Sixth Avenue by Sam Mueller”
He was standing off to the side of the city Greenway looking at the sky when he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Hey buddy. What are you doing?”
Emil turned. It was a policeman on bicycle patrol. “I’m just looking at the clouds, officer,” he said, politely. “That one over there reminds me of a bunny rabbit.”
Continue reading “Emil’s Magic by James Bates”
Tom Kenner sat looking out the window of a waiting room at the Columbus Orthopedic Hospital. He had been through the magazines but, dog-eared and dated, they couldn’t hold his attention. “Maybe staring out the window will make the time go more quickly,” he thought. It didn’t.
Continue reading “Sawbones by Edward N McConnell”
Fang-Liu House is an old hotel near the entertainment district. Sitting in the middle of the row, its dilapidated plaster crumbling out of hairline cracks caused by creeping vines.
On the front of the house hangs a plastic banner, secured to the balcony, the red faded to salmon, and the yellow lettering almost white, “CRIMINAL CUSTOMERS NOT WELCOME. SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY WILL BE REPORTED TO THE AUTHORITIES.”
Continue reading “Fang-Liu House by S.Y. Chen”
The winter always belonged to the writers but the writers never belonged to anyone. That is why a 60-year-old Mr. Shaw sat in his two-story bungalow all alone eating flatbread with a new jar of ‘grandma’s homemade pickle’ that he had bought from the grocery store seven kilometers away. He lead a life of passion and compassion. Passion for his hobbies and compassion for… himself. But Mr. Shaw’s life, contrary to the belief of all the forest rangers who passed his ‘haunted’ house, was not empty. A murder of porcelain and granite along with the ominous howling of distant hungry wolves filled his nights like winds filled windmills. He just loved buying sculptures.
Continue reading “It’s our 7th Birthday. Thank you all for your support. More to follow. Come back on Saturday!!”
First stop was the bins by the pond. He parked the buggy and blew on his hands with little effect, except to bring on a coughing fit. He bent down to pick up a ketchup-stained PFC take away box, fumbling for a moment, edging the carton along the frosted path towards the pond railings. As he picked it up something caught his eye behind the railings; sunlight glinting off a shiny surface. For a minute his heart raced and he wondered if this was the knife from the attack outside the school last week. He instinctively looked around, but at 7:30am on a February morning Clissold Park was desolate. Lloyd was the only soul in there, with just wildlife for company.
Continue reading “An Audience of One by Hugh Todd”
He often walked in the place where it ended. Thoughtlessly. Invariably without point or purpose. He felt like a ghost reflecting on a past life each time he retraced his steps, divorced from all sense of who he was.
He found her sitting in a tree. Her legs dangled over the edge, her dusty feet kicking back and forth. It had taken him a while to find her. It wasn’t as simple as it usually was. Each hourglass of life came with coordinates, of course. The tiny numbers ascribed on the bottom gave approximate locations. It wasn’t a perfect system. Humans weren’t as predictable as, say, ants. Things had gotten tricky when they domesticated the horse, for example. It had gotten worse with the engine. Obviously airplanes had kicked things into gear. But the hourglass makers, those bright-eyed creatures, were quick to adjust. They usually got it in the ballpark.
“Can you tell me what happened today?” Midlin Ambeau’s grandfather said, his eyes as clear as his interest.
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