Kanji’s shop is easy to spot, the name board is big and backlit, and it stands out amongst shabby establishments with dull yellow-red lighting. I shoulder my way through the late evening bazaar crowd to reach the store.
It’s getting dark and I don’t like the look of this neighborhood. Yet I set out to see ‘my uncle’ thanks to my innate sense of duty.
Continue reading “An Invite for Kanji”
Hovering over the table, the young lady stands. Though she calls herself woman. But only in whispers. The room caves upon her slight frame as she leans to re-read the letter, clutching the pen in her hand. Her wild crimson hair which once ran free and loose is pinned and smoothed from her face, just the way it pleases him. The kitchen is sparkling too much for an observer, but all appearances are in place so that he can tell himself that life is perfection and that he is perfection too. Little does he know that the table is set tonight for his Last Supper with the wicked Magdalena. The Magdalena who beneath her apron hides the bruises of unladylike womanhood, the bruises of those who dared to challenge his Gospel one too many times.
Continue reading “Wicked Magdalena by Ailbhe Curran”
“We were just here,” said Ned. “Why do we have to visit so often?”
“It’s been a whole year.” Emma took his arm. “Some folks do this a lot more often than that.”
Continue reading “The Visit by Kurt Hohmann”
The world was so much simpler when Forever 21 was just a shitty clothing store. Nowadays, it’s nothing more than a bar off 42nd street, with a comically-large hourglass by the door filled with sand that never falls. I used to consider it nothing more than a cheap gimmick; another one of the city’s countless tourist traps. The truth is the bar was never what attracted people. All those stupid, far-from-subtle decorations aren’t what people come to stare at; we are.
Continue reading “A Little Time by Dylan Martin”
He say, “You a pitcher or a catcher?” I say, “I’m the red-necked Sandy Koufax.” Sandy being a big deal at the time.
He laughs, asks if I’m hungry. I say, “Yeah and cold, wet and tired.”
Continue reading “How Daddy Gets his Due by Leo Reilly”
I had heard about her for a long time. She lived alone in a cave in a deep-set canyon, on a cliff looking sharply down at the edge of the prairie. She was a most beautiful Indian maiden who, I heard from several sources, had been driven from her Cherokee village. The word bandied about said she was bound in her mind to find a good man to be her husband. She would have the best of children and would be the best of mothers. For that she needed the best man she could find.
Continue reading “The Girl with the Long Dream by Tom Sheehan”
It’s a circuitous route via thumb from my home in the old Borsch Belt in upstate New York to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And when I’ve decided it was time to move on, I bummed rides through rural Southern towns trusting the unspoken agreement, the rules of the road. I made my way to the interstate — a flip of a coin, a wet finger held high in the sweet tarry air. I made a fist of my right hand, extended the thumb, and rode it all the way to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, pitching my backpacking tent near Pequea Creek.
Continue reading “The Road Finally Home by William R Stoddart”
Before Ben knew it he was sixty.
He wasn’t sure if that bothered him but it was now forty one years.
He stayed in what he called his ‘But and Ben’. He loved the old bed that pulled down from the wall. Ben reckoned that there was a cure for cancer within it’s mattress but he didn’t care that there might have also been a hundred different types of lurgey living within the confines of decades of dead skin and bodily fluids. It was quite comfortable.
Continue reading “Ben by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content.”
The first place I search for Mum is Sainsbury’s. It’s the first shop that pops into my head. Maybe she needs ingredients for a cake or something. Though the last one she baked stirs up images of a smouldering mount Vesuvius. She forgot the eggs. I whip through the supermarket to the beep of the checkouts, panning every aisle, even the frozen food section. But she’s not there.
Continue reading “Gone by Robert Steward”
People on honeymoon visit a different time zone and endure a surfeit of shared hours. We learn the language of negotiation when volunteering to lose a little of ourselves. Both of us feel change to be obligatory, though we can never quite express who we might become; we know we will be less ourselves. Adding to our transformation, impending parenthood: the great world tilts.
Continue reading “The Mother Dog by Antony Osgood – Content warning. This story has content that some readers may find upsetting.”
