Tag: memory

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

James and Pruina by Mitchell Toews

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James put another piece of birch on the fire, the stove hinges creaking with hot dryness as he closed and latched the door. The papery bark crackled immediately to life, curling black and sending smoke and flame up the stovepipe. On days this cold, the single-paned glass in the old cottage windows looked triple thick owing to the rime coating the inner surfaces. He reached out to touch the slick, silvery skein, feeling his fingertips numbing and a rivulet of meltwater running down and then along the underside of his hand. The bottom panes were frost jacketed, those higher less so, the hot, rising air from the stove keeping them clear.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Mind Sweep by JJ de Melo

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Dad’s house reeks. Of bad coffee and cheap wine. My uncle talks at me through the odor. I barely hear him over the other mourners, rambling about how I look just like dad did at this age.

“If only you hadn’t got all these tattoos,” he says. He points at one in particular—a barcode from my favorite cereal brand over the left eyebrow.

I shrug at the comment. Stare at my wine glass. If I focus my consciousness on the swirling merlot, I’ll keep this bullshit conversation from recording onto my slate. That’s the trick these days—If you don’t want something damned into a forever memory, look away.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Woven from Memory [*] by Dr A.A. Chibi

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Long before Máire’s time, the village of Mallow was a peaceful settlement in Munster, its fields rich and its people rooted deep in the land. But in the late fifteenth century, calamity struck—a raid by an English militia descended like a plague.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Super Moon in Rome by David Levine

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Two in the morning. The air was luminous, chalky, bloated with humidity. The smoke detector was a broken stoplight, stuck on green all night.  Exhausted, jet lagged, eyeing the light, I thought of my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother Ida.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Dancing Woman by Bradley J. Collins

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She’s in the middle of the street – a blur, a twirl, of color, this woman with a boombox. She’s not safe behind barricades or idling in a car as the rest of us are. She wears no coat, no makeup, shielded only by her floral dress.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Are You Going to Kalamazoo? By Christopher Ananias 

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Tonight Jack would talk to the ghost. He took to the street. The warm wind is blowing on his face. Splash—pound—Nikes scrape the edge of a curb. Whoa that was close. He lets his mind wander down into his feet. His mind is splash-pound.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Her Ghost in These Pages by Daniel Joseph Day

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I write about Jeanie just to keep her alive, her memory is a ghost in these pages. Though it hurts to remember, the pain is easier to bear than the emptiness. So I return again and again to the image of her face which at first was burned into my mind but now begins to fade – the lines once sharp and vivid are loose and blurred.

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