Port Fairy, Victoria 1859
I am grown now; and the sperm whales and the southern rights that brought the ships here seeking their precious oil and the bones which make corsets for ladies in far-away places no longer visit. But still the people come, and the farming settlement thrives. Port Fairy, named for a sea captain who landed in this spot, part of the Port Phillip District in the great southern land.
Continue reading “The Seventh Wave by AJ Lyndon”
“It’s hot enough to taste the air and eat the summer,” Nana said. She settled herself onto the stoop’s top step. “Don’t worry child, he’ll be here soon enough.”
Continue reading “Waiting for Daddy by Serenity Marshall”
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Mom was a world class liar. Once in a lifetime. She believed that a solid lie should have few moving parts; this theory allowed her to capitalize on the specious notion that true-sounding things are brief. Mainly, Mom got her whoppers over with a confident attitude,brevity and something in her eyes that told you not to fuck with it further.
Continue reading “Good News Club by Leila Allison”
Roscoe was a three-year-old Dachshund who had a problem: his “Associate Human” (A.H.)–though in most other ways acceptable–had a thing for dressing poor Roscoe in ridiculous costumes and posting the result on her YouTube channel. Dachshunds are uncommonly dignified, and things like being forced into wearing a “Frankfurter” outfit for the sole purpose of the A.H. gaining likes and subscriptions hurt Roscoe’s pride.
Continue reading “Roscoe and the Lightning Glory: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical”
He stood in the rain to wash his sins away thinking it would do the trick, cleanse his soul, invigorate him once more, to be what he once was. That’s our hero, Viking Arel Tor, neighborhood leader, pointer of straight or straighter paths, finder of fame, good luck, saving for you the best lady of all in your welcome arms, for now and always. Viking’s way in the world.
But where did he go wrong, our Viking?
Continue reading ” Standing in the Rain to Wash the Sins Away by Tom Sheehan”
From the backseat, Callie yowls and scratches her claws against the front grate of her carrier. It’s a miracle I even got her in the thing—she hates being cooped up. They say pets take on characteristics of their owners.
Continue reading “In the Eye by Chrissie Rohrman”
It would be a lark to sit before a cartoonist at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, a joke because last night two of her oil paintings were hung in an art exhibition hall side by side with a pair of her husband’s oils. Would not a cartoon of her be the perfect ironic token to give him to commemorate their recognition? One local art critic dubbed them the “Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera” of Orange County, California. Granted, her husband had cultivated him and planted the phrase, but now it was out there.
Continue reading “The Cartoon by Cy Hill”
It was all hers, the night, the huge house, the loneliness, the dark corners of every room that she knew so well. It was all hers, and Thursday was special, just about every Thursday except the ones precluded by her natural flow. First, there’d be a soak in the tub, for an hour or so, after which she’d stand in front of the 7-foot mirror and study herself, always noting the dark mass of pubic hair, curled and rolled and headlining her view. There was a connection with that action, left by her husband, Kent.
Continue reading “The Thursday Night Woman by Tom Sheehan – Adult Content.”
Cookie Simms loved a single piece of furniture in her home, the two-foot wide, seven-foot-tall mirror in her bedroom, away from all the other fuss and bother in the house. She found it easy to favor the mirror because it favored her ass, her breasts, the elegance of timid nipples, the unnerving black clutch of hair highlighting her pubic area, after her ass or nipples, that dark and mysterious claim to feminine wares was knockout number one in the man-parade of gazers, she was ultimately sure. It had begun when she was a mere 15-year-old sophomore in high school and often heard the boys saying, supposedly in private, what was so good about the privates that roamed around them all day in school and much of the balance of day rushing to midnight, where new and nightly dreams about hidden female treasures flooded dark hours as well as supposedly sleep-like twists and turns of growing boys. Those secret hours were loaded with ideas of how all such goodness would soon be theirs, by hook or by crook.
Continue reading “The Fair and Dear Damsel in Distress by Tom Sheehan – Adult Content”
Everyone showed up to the funeral. They grieved, they said nice things, they ate a nice meal, and then they left. And moved on. Or at least tried to. But then it happened again, just a few days later, and they were back at the same church, the same cemetery, saying the same nice things and eating leftovers from the same nice meal. And this time, they were afraid to leave. Because the important questions aren’t usually asked this close to the grieving process. The important answers aren’t usually as necessary. One death is sad, but two, and so similar in nature, is alarming. Were they both accidents? Or were they linked? And if they weren’t accidents and they were linked, the questions that came to mind among the grieving townspeople were as follows: Who killed them? Why did they kill them? And am I next?
Continue reading “Aunt Sarah by Jeff Hill”
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