Fiction
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Explain the circumstances in as much detail as necessary. – Eric Darby
I had been considering shaving my moustache when a squadron of nuns knocked my door. None wore habits, but they had that sturdy nun look. The young one said they’d come to surrender my daughter to me. I haven’t had actual sex in seven years, but here was this four-year-old daughter: Germina with scuffed shoes.…
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Cutting Back – Keith Trottier
Robert’s mother hobbled into the kitchen. When had that started? The lively woman he had known as a child was visibly ravaged by time. Her bottle blonde hair that had once been so full sat deflated in shoulder length curls, her muddy roots bleeding into the fading bronze bleach. Her green eyes had become tiny…
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Oceanside – Jeff Kaliss
Mom will call for me before she goes. Josh kept repeating what he could fit in his mind while his mother lay in an assisted living center 450 miles to the south, where hospice care was now assisting her dying. It was the hospice nurse who called Josh’s home office in San Francisco on a…
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Asking For Directions – Francesca Bavaro
“What are you doing?” Martin asked. He was a portly man with a bad combover, half-hidden behind an oversized city map. His wife Dee waved him away, as if she was swatting away a bee or fly or some other pest she didn’t care for. She was short in stature, neither fat nor thin, but…
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A Rational Weakness (Peteso)
A Rational Weakness by Peteso “Destruction is the duty of every man, woman . . .” the loud speaker blared, just before the thrown grenade exploded on the platform, sending the Vice-Admiral in charge of Persuasion back to the ship in a log. And indeed a thirst for destruction, self- or other- wise, seemed a…
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Rat Glances (Les Miller)
Rat Glances by Les Miller Jason Jeremiah missed his computer commuter train and fell awkwardly onto the train tracks. “Well, I’ll just stay here,” he thought. “I’m not getting up. That’s the last train I’ll ever miss. To hell with this rat race.” As he lay there waiting for the next train to divide him…
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Cadillacs Will Roll (Clare Jonte)
Cadillacs Will Roll by Clare Jonte He looks so beautiful she thought. His round boyish face was lit with delight. Again he was the whole show, and there was something splendid about him. This is what she had known and loved, but now she knew his other side as well. She knew how the slightest…
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Sapphire by Dominique Witman
The shop that Ren Law minded was cramped, with no windows to stream sun through, and a secret hatch door in the ceiling being the only means of entrance or exit. However, what the modest room lacked in size, it made up for in content. Reams of silk with delicate golden brocades, inlaid with dusty…
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Pinkie (Excerpt) by Edisol Wayne Dotson
Pinkie (Excerpt) over BLACK: Airplane wheels screech on landing. Fade in: Ext. san francisco international airport – DAY Pinkie appears in the doorway of a private jet, goes down the stairs. Manny follows. Manny crosses to one of two parked black hybrid SUVs, takes a set of keys from a MAN. The Man drives…
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Ghost Dance by Matt Luedke
Ani stared out the window and past bouncing elm branches at the night sky, shifting her head quietly so she wouldn’t disturb the noisy floorboards and wake Laila beside her. She could see more of the stars than she was used to, outside the city in this drafty storage shed. She idly wished she knew…
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