‘Tiredness can kill. Take a break.’
The sign expanded, glowing in the beam of headlamps, and was gone.
The lights in the darkness were beginning to blur; the flecks of winding taillights, the flickering ribbon of the lane markers, merging to one. He put on some Iron Maiden to drown the hum of the engine and lowered the window for an inrush of air. The icy blast stopped him yawning. He blinked and leaned forwards.
Continue reading “Tiverton Southbound by Matthew Roy Davey”
Sometimes I go to Mordialloc pier to watch people fish. I never fish myself. I hate the smell and getting my fingers sticky with bait and having to watch behind you to make sure you don’t snag anyone with the hook and permanently blind them. But I like watching. Interesting things happen when you watch for long enough. Nothing of the adventurous kind. Just odd, amusing things squeezed between stretches of monotony. I am then assured that my life will, at the very least, be filled with amusing details if I care to look. I don’t hope for adventure anymore. The feeling I get when I return home from one is dreadful. I’d like no more of them.
Continue reading “Mordialloc Pier by Matthew Lee”
By the time my mother mentions falling, I let the drone of her voice fade to the unawake part of my mind. Her words are a steady hum, punctuated by rattling breaths and muffled snorts as she clears the tangy scent of antiseptic from her nostrils. If I let my gaze drift away from her paper-white figure on the hospital bed, I can pretend that I’m alone. In my peripherals, she blends into the monotony, clear and soft as water. The only thing that moves is her mouth, but her ramblings are like static – barely present, and even more unintelligible when I focus on them.
Continue reading “World Tilting at Bedtime by Katya Lee”
The kid had this puffy bee-sting face I wanted to shove into the toilet bowl. I liked him as soon as he came, breathless and sweating, through the door. I liked him more when he offered me a cigarette.
Continue reading “The Clown and The Kid by Ashley Laughlin”
She keeps her eye on the clock while circling the room to peer over their shoulders. They’re working on collages, gluing items onto black construction paper—magazine clippings, pompoms, scraps of tissue paper and string.
Continue reading “Worthy by Sara Weiss”
The FitnessGram Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues.
Our class lines up at the end of the court. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. It’s that time of the year, again. I passed the stretching test handily––I like to tie my shoes standing up. Chin-ups and pull-ups I flunked, but it doesn’t matter. These results are for the state, not for a grade.
Continue reading “When Every Breath is a Blade”
After much madness here, poor vision, medical visits, bulb switching and light removal/replacements, securing the slanted rays of sun over my shoulder allowing those uses to spill across “Miles‘” pages, and a mind that neither attends reading for long stretches as it used to nor retains what it once was capable of, I have finally finished the reading of a fascinating book. “Mile’s” captivated me, the characters, the language, the new arc of a different story, another story and drama between people, but an arc having the same beginning and the same ending as many other arcs of my reading … life, lives, loves on the very planet, and resounding in daily sight.
Continue reading “Bill Adam’s Book, “Miles” (With Shan’t” (Shall not) by Tom Sheehan”
“Your mother’s batshit crazy,” said Sister Loretta
“Madam’s not from the Valley, poor dear,” explained Sister Carmel. “That’s the problem. Your mother’s not grounded like we are. My family has lived here forever.”
Sister Carmel selected a cupcake from my tray. She pointed the cupcake at an ancient and rudimentary clock, one of a dozen in the room where the sisters were awaiting their assignations with that evening’s clients.
Continue reading “Stopped Watch by Scott Pomfret”
And I’ve swallowed the pill only to have my friends bail and so I walk the streets alone.
I am a streetwalker.
I come across a hostel bar … backpackers, ‘Fuck it,’ I think ‘They’ll be up for a yarn.’
There is a staircase leading upward and so I climb and enter a bar full of chatter in a multitude of accents.
Continue reading “At My Feet by Michael Tyler”
It was her father who first showed her. If you pointed your arms straight at two very distant points, features in the landscape, or clouds, or stars, you made yourself the centre of the universe. Everything was drawn into you, you were the fundamental point of a triangle, whose hypotenuse, a funny word at first but easy to remember once you had said it two or three times, could shift between any pair of objects, the sun and the moon, two trees, the chimney on top of the neighbours’ roof and the tv aerial on the top of her parents’ house, any two things, anywhere. It really didn’t matter, it was still a triangle, because of the one fixed point, and the two others.
Continue reading “A Call To Arms by Julian Walker”
