All Stories, General Fiction

Maximum by Andy Carroll

– I’d get yer ginger man from Billions on the tv on a boat, take him out there to Mutton Island and let him do some inside-trading on me.

The other two shrieked with laughter.  It was the three cleaners’ second smoke break since lunch.

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All Stories, General Fiction

s-Perfect by Tris Matthews

After a short rest, when she thought he might fall asleep, Amy reached round to slap her sweaty lump of husband on the back.

“Get off now.”

With a groan, Brad peeled his slick torso from hers, rolled off and collapsed, naked and vulnerable. Their mixed sweat chilled the front of Amy’s torso, but she didn’t have time to shower.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Glooning the Chartreuse Lemon by Leila Allison

A Few Rings of Hell’s Bell Ago

The little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place seemed to be smiling on me. I was up 500,000 bit-pesos at the online Uruguayan poker site, and someone had finally restocked the Snax Machine in the lobby with chili-cheese Fritos. Yes, the good guys were winning, and no one was supervising my activities. I fondly recall whistling “Dance Ten; Looks Three” from A Chorus Line, prior to carb-loading for that long elevator ride back to my office, deep in the bowels of the Smiling Face of Darkness.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Lemondrop by Meghan Louise Wagner

I sat a long time before going up to the house. Vanessa lived on the left side of a duplex behind the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. There was a pink beauty salon chair on the white paint chipped front porch. Weathered cardboard boxes filled with National Geographic magazines and empty Marlboro 100 packs were stacked in the corner. After I knocked at the door, it opened and I saw Vanessa standing there before me. I knew her as the regular who always asked for extra soymilk in her reusable coffee mugs but my manager called her Fat Madonna. I didn’t get the joke until he showed me a picture on his phone one day.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Man of Mine by Emily Suzanne Young

“Isn’t this all a bit – I don’t know – American?

It was the only description I could think of that fully captured my distaste. I sat in the kitchen with my arms crossed, looking up at where Jack, my husband, and William, his publicist, were standing on the other side of the kitchen island; the low-hanging light above us illuminated their faces as they watched my every reaction.

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