All Stories, General Fiction

Quality Photos by Steven McBrearty

The summer of our wedding my bride Claudia VanderMeer and I leased a split-level duplex on a dead-end street in a close-in gentrifying area of south central Austin, a quiet, in-transition neighborhood of young families and senior citizens and dogs.  The opposite side of the duplex was occupied by the owner/landlord, a white-haired University of Texas professor who we figured was gay.  We were fine with him being gay (perhaps we even wanted him to be gay), both for philosophical reasons and as a counterpoint to our conspicuously heterosexual, pre-children, pre-jaded bliss.  

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General Fiction

That Time When Cole Almost Kissed Jane by August Miller

“Alright alright, I gotta tell you about this time Cole almost kissed Jane. Cole’s a good guy, a bit of a fucking nerd if you ask me, but a good guy, an accountant at this firm, just a little one downtown. Doesn’t look like a whole lotta money flows through it. Cole usually parks like a half a block down. Sometimes, it’s really nice out, then I think he walks the whole way to work, something like 7 blocks maybe, but it’s got that shit intersection off State.”

“Right, hate that fucking intersection.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Suzanne by Avery Mathers

I’m standing in the bus shelter on Union Street, and the number twenty-three has been ‘due in two minutes’ for the last five minutes. People troop past on the pavement; hoods up or heads down or fighting with umbrellas. Alone together in the shelter, we happy few peer through the drizzled glass and check our watches. A splinter of Leonard Cohen is stuck in my head: Suzanne.

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