From sunrise to sunset, Jill was a good-time girl.
She was hot stuff, longing to live large in high cotton, and Jack—was Jack—a jack of all trades, a master of none, living on the edge looking for face-to-face horizontal celebrations.
Continue reading “Jill’s Idiom Odyssey by Frederick K Foote”
I’m well aware there are endless possibilities, limitless universes where people live rather than die, where situations work out rather than fall apart, where superb memories are made rather than never created, and where love blossoms rather than weakens. I’m unsure how to reach these complex destinations, but I know they’re out there, situated somewhere on a higher dimension or hidden behind the veil we call reality. They conceal all the could-have-beens, circumstances that might have occurred if given the opportunity but, of course, never came to fruition due to some seen or unseen event…
Continue reading “The Could-Have-Beens by Mason Yates”
When Sally saw the ad in the free newspaper “Your Town” she knew that she had to check it out. “All around assistant, cook, accountant, teacher of tech. Low pay, but free room and board.” She was currently barely able to get by as a production assistant on a local television station. Without a small bequest from her late aunt, she couldn’t afford food and rent. The parents lived in Spain and she hadn’t seen them for ten years. Her financial situation made her feel like a child even though she was thirty-three. The Lakeside address was pretty ritzy, which was another plus.
Continue reading “The Assistant by Doug Hawley”
I’m parked on her street in front of the house. Hesitating. It’s just my third day back. What will Francesca do? I might have waited even longer if it weren’t for the thought of her sister, Lisa, who always greeted me with a hug and a smile.
Continue reading “Dry by Christopher W. Hall”
Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
“Hey, Odol! School’s out?” We were on our way home when we heard this. Odori’s grandfather, crouched on the roof of their home and framed by jumbled white clouds streaming through a blue sky, was looking down at us. The prickly autumn sunlight glanced off the orange slate of the roof.
Continue reading “Odori’s Grandfather A miniature by O Chŏnghǔi”
She comes every June to set us free. Zooms into our neat little neighborhood, somehow boiling a cloud of dust from Grandma’s swept asphalt, brakes squealing like a stunt driver. Grandma’s jaw works but she forces the corners of her mouth up, tries to smile a welcome. The car fishtails in, parks crooked as a middle finger. A brown foot, naked, toenails the color of a freshly skinned knee, heels open the driver’s door and a cardboard cup in a long-fingered hand appears. Immediately upends. A brown waterfall of liquid and half-melted ice splatters the driveway, and as it rivers down to the street I hear it: that wonderful voice. Yuck, flat, Aunt Glory announces, and summer begins.
Continue reading “Dirty Summer by Jennifer Maloney”
Willie Ferguson lay staring at the wee cracks in his bedroom ceiling. Like a lot of people, he hadn’t realised, til he stopped working, that he was missing something. It sure as hell wasn’t the job that he missed: he’d collected his pension with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t family either: his sister, Margaret, living behind a privet hedge down in England, was emphatically a distant relative, and should ever remain so. But Willie knew he really was missing something.
Continue reading “Searching for Unicorns by Michael Bloor”
Ian was a stereotype.
I didn’t really know him but I knew his wife.
The reason I say ‘stereotype’ is that he was a raging alcoholic but unbelievably functional. The usual story here, he worked in the entertainment industry as a lighting man for a theatre and that was a life that had alcohol not just at the end of the day, also throughout. As long as he could shine a spotlight and in these more technical days, programme a system, no one gave a shit.
Continue reading “Ian by Hugh Cron”
“I won’t talk about the past anymore,” she said. “I’m only talking about what will happen from now on. I’m using this pain to make something wonderful.”
He held her hand, like he had so many times. Her masculine hands. Creative hands for making wonderful things. Like her saddest smile.
Continue reading “Doll Parts by Ximena Escobar”
“I need to speak to Peter.”
Ann looked at him and worried straight away.
“What’s wrong love, why has he got you so riled – I mean, for fuck sake, he’s Peter, the most inoffensive wee guy that we’ve ever known.”
Colin gave her a hug, “I don’t want to say anything until I hear his side.”
Continue reading “Peter by Hugh Cron (Strong Adult Content)”
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