Tag: unemployment

All Stories, General Fiction

Literary Imitations and Good Mental Health by Michael Bloor

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It’s an April Sunday afternoon, the long, wet, cold winter has not yet relented. Alan sits staring at the blank email on his laptop. He’s meant to be sending a newsy update message to his brother in New Zealand. The rain splatters against the window. His brother was wanting him to come to New Zealand on holiday. Apparently, there’s a beach on the Coromandel peninsula where a hot water spring bubbles up through the sand: you could dig yourself your own hot tub, and sit there watching the tide roll in…

No fuckin’ chance of the Coromandel peninsula this year, bro.

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All Stories, General Fiction

At the Zoo by Gil Hoy

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It’s late in the afternoon in late October. I’m at the zoo with my ten-year-old son, Elijah. His mother, my wife Sally, chose our son’s name. Sally comes from a religious family and goes to Mass daily. Elijah’s staring at the elephants, the largest land mammals on earth. One of the three is particularly massive. He has a huge head, large ears, and a long trunk that is sucking up drinking water from a ​big puddle of rainwater​. My son and I have been coming here most weekends as of late. Ever since I lost my better paying job and Sally started working part-time. I’ve been coming here since I was a small boy. Elephants have been a main attraction here for as long as I can remember.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Temporarily Unemployed by Tom Sheehan

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Brenda Beal, “Worth a feel,” she’d said a thousand times since Jack had dumped her and two kids, without a car, without a washing machine, without a refrigerator that worked, without all the money from her bank account, owing two months’ rent and the electricity and heating bills including the A/C bill (but he took the A/C because it was new and worked better than he did on his best day): all of this too soon revealed in their marriage. Little Jackie was her reminder of the night in the back seat of Jack’s father’s car, at the lake, under the moon, in a soft breeze the Atlantic sent in over Nahant and Lynn beaches. And Jenny carried the memory of a three-week hiatus after Jackie was born.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Long Way Home by Jason A. Feingold

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Robert got up as he did every school day morning to his six-fifty alarm. Liz, his wife, was still asleep. She didn’t get up until seven. He woke his son Jonathan to begin the process of supervising him for getting ready for school. As the boy reluctantly dressed, Robert went to the kitchen and took his blood sugar. It was high, so he cursed under his breath and thought about all the bad things he’d eaten the night before.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Giant Pandas by Rebecca McGraw Thaxton

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The night I asked Lena to drop out of high school and marry me, it was freezing. We were waiting out a fall hailstorm, hunkered together under the awning of Kennywood Amusement Park’s Haunted House which was Lena’s favorite ride, even though she rode it with her eyes closed. “Oh, Lennerd,” she said, “Yes. Yes!” Afterwards, we rode the neck-whipping wooden coaster, Thunderbolt, and she was a good sport about it.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Shadowed Solitude by Donald Baker

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typewriter

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.

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