Tag: women's rights

All Stories, General Fiction

Memoir of a Fiction by Claudine Mussuto

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The abortion wasn’t the commencement or the culmination. The termination wasn’t the central event.

1.

It was a day when a more fanatical human placard did not carry a gun with which to shoot and kill the adult female receptionist. The procedure transpired in the summer of 1982 on Beacon Street in Brookline, an upscale suburban sister to Boston and, across the river, to academic Cambridge and its proletariat neighbor, Somerville, where I lived. Human billboards displayed the evolution of the species through its bloodied protozoan, bird, and fish forms at a proscribed distance from the clinic entrance. I and my volunteer escort were unmolested up the short flight of concrete stairs and into the locked steel and glass door of the health center brownstone.

The one-night stand wasn’t the inception or the finale. The encounter wasn’t the foremost incident.

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All Stories, General Fiction

What’s in a Drink? by Sushma R Doshi

literallystories2014

They call me an English movie addict. True that. I watch every movie, web series and show streaming out of Hollywood. Not watch. Binge watch. Everyday. Till my eyes ache and my head hurts. I watch those images on my television, riveted by those pretty houses and manicured green lawns in what they call the suburbs, the crowds in…what they refer to as downtown, walking briskly to work, women in heels, men in blazers and overcoats…. the glamor of beaches, blue oceans and snow capped mountains. Even the sunlight seems different…. a golden hue showering gently on the landscape. Basking in the sun was a term invented for them. Here it is a blazing sun scorching the earth and burning us. But out of these pictures, it is that of a woman driving to a bar for a drink that I’m addicted to.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Worth It by Shawn Eichman

literallystories2014

Breaking news. Jury selection for Texas v. Sanchez started today. The trial has attracted national attention for the state attorney’s controversial decision to subpoena private information in a menstrual cycle tracking app used by Sanchez from the tech giant Omega.

Jax let the screams flow through her. Screams of anguish. She looked around at the ad hoc stations where protestors sat with zombie eyes and wet-sticky faces as volunteers washed off pepper spray with milk. There was something aesthetic about the contrast of cool white and hot red on bruised flesh. An elegant appetizer served on silver trays at a political fundraiser. Crispy skin marinated in spiced cream, paired with this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau.

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All Stories, General Fiction

They Always Welcomed Visitors by Mariam Saidan

literallystories2014

It had been a year since the separation, and she was still trying to get a divorce. Domestic violence. Or ‘family issues’, as they would say. Her husband admitted he’d made mistakes, but he’d do better. Be better. A better man. She didn’t want him to be a better man. Or anything else, in fact. Only to agree to the divorce. But the court needed evidence. Specific evidence of maltreatment or betrayal.

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