I moved the boiling eggs to the cold burner. Hopefully Edward wasn’t lactose intolerant. I was making my famous potato salad. The newscaster sounded solemn—something about a landslide—Indonesia or somewhere. Then almost musically, “Onto the local murders.”
Continue reading “Potato Salad and Mixed Drinks by Christopher Ananias”
“You are not here to become a man, because to become a man you must first learn the rules of love,” Vikram Paya, the best of us, began on the first day of the Dhoon School Weekly Newspaper class. “No, my old sons of Bombay, my riotous banchods of Delhi, you fish-eating Bengalis, and the rest of you celestial bodies, suburbanites, the few villagers—you are here to go to better places, because, after all, The Dhoon School is but a waiting-place for Cambridge, for Oxford… for the lucky few of you—here, you will not learn to be great men but exemplary boys…”
Continue reading “The Rules of Love by Arjun Shah”
There’s a right clattering in the yard. Hold my breath and stand stock still. Then I turn round, put my eye to a crack in the door and I see a black van. One of them with sliding doors. And there’s that gold lettering. Swinford’s Tea and Coffee: Pure and Robust. My mouth’s sticky with thirst. Haven’t even thought of a drink of water, let alone tea. And there’s some bloke in a grey coat clambering out of it. Same colour as them clouds. Could be camouflage on a day like this. He’s a a tall bloke. One of them that stoops his neck when he walks. Takes his cap off. Looks like he’s lost. He has shiny, rusty coloured hair. Brylcreemed. Wipes his nose with back of his hand. I step out the door.
Continue reading “Spade by Andy Larter”
Reader Alert – Adult content
They rush us up the hill to safety like a herd of Caribou moving past the basketball courts. Sirens whoop in all directions. Black smoke pours out the windows—oxygen is key—she is really going now. Gilbert smiles. Gilbert is deranged. His brother killed eight people at the Lilly Street Mall.
Continue reading “In the Flames by Christopher Ananias”
“What happened was… He went a-midnight kissin’. Then he went a-woo-woo-missin.’”
Mama wiped her hands on a dishtowel. She just come in from the garden.
Continue reading “Somethin’ to Croon About by Carly Berg”
Young Toche, “the bird,” slight of stature and weighing no more than a bundle of palm leaves, was forever a dreamer. In his tiny village, deep in the jungles in Colombia, time moves slowly. He lived the life of his ancestors. Dinner came at the end of a spear, and fire and a thatch roof were luxuries. Modernity was yet to invade.
Continue reading “Little Green Men by Jason Abshire”
Tonight, a strong man died in Belfast.
We had been on the site for three days. Day one, up went the big tent. The rigging, lights, safety nets and everything else that goes into putting on ‘the show’. Day two, the dress rehearsal and an opportunity for those of us who needed it, to get clean. A chance for those of us who needed it, to score. Day three was opening night. We were set up on the outskirts of Andersonstown. Out of the way, on a plot of land that had been raised to the ground under the promise of social philanthropy only for the plans to cool and the memories to fade. Now it’s little more than uneven concrete and free parking. That’s how Mal got it for the week for so cheap. It should have been a risk this far out, but people are the same everywhere. You put enough curiosities in one place and they’ll come out of wherever they’re held up to look at them.
Continue reading “Andytown by David Louden”
Disturbing content – see tags at the bottom of the page.
Gil doesn’t talk, just sits there drawing demons. Mr. Ny clapped his erasers together and called Gil to the blackboard for one of his impossible Geometry theorems. Gil snatched up the chalk, like a pissed-off Picasso, and made quick hard chalk-chalk marks, and it was solved. The last bell rang and the mad dash.
Continue reading “After Lloyd by Christopher J. Ananias”
This is a crime scene. I shouldn’t be here; I’m not a cop anymore. So, I ducked under the yellow tape strung across the two trellis supports and picked the lock. Dusting residue coated surfaces in suspect locations; someone had cut two patches from the cheap gray rug. A ceiling fan with a squeaky bearing rotated slowly, which helped me breathe because the smell of death hung like diesel exhaust.
Continue reading “Slither by Ed N. White”
Cass had been on the Cold Case Time Travel squad eight years when I replaced her partner, Hoss. We’d done things differently in Present-Day Homicide so I shut up and listened. Cass was a pro, by the book mostly–she could even fix the damn machine! And since no other towns could afford the traveler fees, we’d be in ’60s Harlem one day and ’30s Greenwich the next. I’m guessing they brought me in for the Harlem cases. Brothers don’t tend to open up to two pale folks from the future. Of course, they weren’t supposed to know we were from the future, but occasionally our Era Lingo implants malfunctioned.
Continue reading “Baby Blues by Jack Powers”
