As his hearing receded into the ethers, Frank’s days filled with numbing despair. He was going deaf, there was no denying it. He’d tried with what inner strength he possessed to stave it off, first by denying it completely like any sane person would do, then by telling himself he was only forty-two, things like this aren’t permanent at this age, of course it will pass.
Continue reading “Hear, Hear by Karl Luntta”
Disclaimer: This story is an entirely fictional reimagining loosely based on a true case from the ER. Names, characters, and details surrounding the case are entirely products of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to real persons. Any similarities to true events are purely coincidental.
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Red lights cut through the night as the old man gazed ahead. He sat in his truck, staring, stopped at a traffic light. He sighed. The weight of the world lay on his shoulders. Exhausted, the man was at wits’ end. The preceding weeks were unrelenting. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it all. He was tired. His bones were dust, and delicate mind warped with hardly a coherent thought remaining.
Continue reading “The Boy by Clayton Korson MD”
‘Andrew, we need to talk.’
Andrew pauses for a moment, glaring at the torn Skinny Puppy poster he has taped to the inside of his locker. He feels like complete and total ass. He’d been up much too late the night before, doing bong hit after bong hit alone in his room, studying The Anarchist’s Cookbook in confused fascination. Just think of it – kablooe! He’d set it off in the Headley-Royce parking lot where the school royalty congregates, sitting on the hoods of their sixteenth-birthday Mercedes, sneering down at him as he trudges up the hill from the bus stop.
Continue reading “The Accident by Courtney Jean Day”
They hadn’t touched her daughter, the crowd outside. They had wept at her in holy resignation and punched fists of beads at the air, hostile with certainty, but Bec had drawn herself wider and taller, a linen sailcloth harnessing the crackle of hostile air, propelling them forwards to the safety of the car.
Continue reading “Loving You by Simon Ashton”
Sitting forward on the hard plastic cushions of what some might call a couch, you remember your sister once told you death is an ocean: waves crashing and receding again into the watery stuff from whence they came. You remember how you used to find that image comforting, the oneness of it all, and shake your head now at the thought of it. The sterile smell of the room around you isn’t quite sharp enough to cut through a wandering mind, so you press your hand against the looming incubator to your left and hum some tune from your childhood loud enough to drown out the CPAP machine—the one that whirrs and hisses in the unmistakable timbre of crashing waves.
Continue reading “Eggshells by Amy Rains – Includes references some readers may find distressing – see tags.”
1.
Alarms blare. It is the end. David knows it as much as he knows anything else. Below, glorious golden clouds meld in a blue atmosphere. So much like Earth. But his family won’t see the light of this star system for twelve years. They will grow old and die, and if he ever makes it back all that will be waiting is a grave. Assuming, of course, there is a planet to return to, and a way home.
The ship falls, and David with it. McLonsky’s blood bubbles and flutters around the cockpit in globules that have minds of their own.
This is it. The end. David closes his eyes, and he waits for his Maker’s embrace.
Continue reading “Home Again by Keith LaFountaine”
Look closely. Near the walnut bookcase a friend built for my son. Can you see me? I visit here every day.
A couple of weeks ago, I told my son it was time. There were no miracles cures for me – ninety-two years old – not really high on the list of miracle-cure candidates.
Continue reading “It’s All I Can Do by Thomas Elson”
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