He believed he would win, he believed he would live. Right up until the end when finally he understood, he had believed. It wasn’t possible to accept anything other than life. Just to breathe and to be was all he knew. It’s all we know isn’t it?
Continue reading “He Believed He Would Win by Diane M Dickson”
The ache my father left fled one day when I wasn’t paying attention. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t bury him. We couldn’t afford priority shipping so after a thirty year absence he arrived via USPS, on a Saturday morning, in a box sealed with tape that read “human remains” in blue block letters. I didn’t know they made tape for marking the packages of dead people. I didn’t know they put the incinerated bodies into a plastic bag inside of the box. It was dark grey and heat sealed as if someone had manufactured what was returned to us. I didn’t know that human remains were so heavy, or that when you lift a box containing the dead you’re acutely aware that this is something you once longed for; that this as close as you will ever again get.
For some time now the literary world has been speculating upon the delay between Sidney Shield’s 14th Gothic novel and the appearance of his long overdue 15th. The reasons being bandied about are quite preposterous, especially the more macabre ones, though Mr. Shield is not displeased by the latter. As personal secretary to the author, I have been authorized to give an explanation on his behalf. I hasten to add that the words used are my own.
I heard my orchids screaming last night. They were angry I did not kiss them and spit blood on their pistils. My body was numb from the combination of red wine and rum. The day had been full of anxiety, so I made the decision to exhaust myself with harmful liquid.
Vince hid the look of disbelief as he stared at the twenty-something punk who had just asked him the ridiculous question. Worse, had done it with a smirk that told him right away what he already suspected from the beginning.
He didn’t have a chance at this job.
Crazy Ed Mahoney went out the back door on Monday to urinate in his garden. He believed, incorrectly, that he was saving on his water bill. His neighbors had given up on changing his ways. After seeing him in the act a few times, they learned not to look in the direction of his backyard at 7am, 1pm and 4pm when Ed would urinate like clockwork. Whatever else was wrong with Ed, he had an excellent prostate.
It was my wife, Esme, who suggested we get a pet for our children. “It will teach them responsibility,” she said.
“Sounds good,” I replied. However, I was not actually paying attention when she brought up the subject because I was going over my notes for a lecture on string theory. So, it came as a complete surprise when Esme and the twins arrived home from the pet store with a ferret.
Continue reading “Quantum Hamsters and Other Pet Anomalies by Hermine Robinson”
Day #16
The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook—Rule #1: Once you have arrived at your assigned location, hunker down and wait for ancillary instructions from your Assignment Coach.
4 a.m.
The crows quarrel over dead rat scraps in the gutter.
CNN, I haven’t turned it off for two weeks. Images of desert proxy-wars, percolate through the cable; ISIS driving US Iraq-abandoned Humvees and armoured vehicles; teenage recruits firing AK-47s into the Mosul sky; American Republican Party candidates debating penis size.
The assignment is to instigate a shakeup, by diverting the ginger haired sociopath’s motorcade down the street below my window. I have his picture taped to the wall, a smug man orbiting himself. He’s been granted Secret Service protection. That may complicate things. There’ll probably be revolution if I accomplish my assignment. A master class in failed democracy, for all those who care to attend.
Continue reading “The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook by dm gillis”
It was a day he learned too much about himself when the judges announced his drawing, 1st Place, and he heard the applause, and that night at the party, drank whisky for the first time, and loved how it made him feel. He was eighteen, and in a few more years, he flunked out of community college, and kept drinking anyway, until his wife, a local girl who gave him a son, left him after tolerating more humiliation than most women, but oh, he wasn’t done yet; it took until he lost his job as a used car salesman even though if he’d been sober til noon it would have been overlooked. He had nothing left, and sat in the common, and told passerby’s that life was unfair, and the townspeople knew who he was, and his story was nothing new.
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be a newt? To reside peaceably in an aquarium, rising every so often for a gulp of air, catching a worm in your thin amphibious mouth and being generally content? I often think about that. This is about a time when I thought about it a lot. It was the summer when I worked as a student intern at a senior center near Brighton Beach. I was pursuing a social work degree at Hunter College, and sharing an apartment in downtown Brooklyn with two other graduate students. It was a lonely time for me, and I kept several spotted newts in a terrarium for company, and a five disc CD player that I had on continuously when I was home to ward off the isolating silence.
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