The Teacher, The Student by Tricia Currans-Sheehan
Alice didn’t know how to stop it but she had to do something. Her student in the after school program in Beijing called herself Pocahontas. Her mother told Alice that she had watched the Disney film...
View ArticleBob by Paul Beckman
Bob is my neighbor. Bob’s wife, Janie, is having an affair with my son Bob. The name duplication will help if she’s a sleep talker. Bob suspects Janie is having and affair and confides in me. He...
View ArticleHank and Gracie by Laura Beasley
He feared clowns and resented their phony attempts to be funny when they are mean. He wanted a family and had been alone for decades. The old man with warts scared the village children. They preferred...
View ArticleBells by Colin Campbell
“It’s not Bells,” said the old punter. The early evening of the day’s first drink still welcomed natural light in the pub windows to glow the liquid gold in the glass. But it was not exactly the right...
View ArticleShelley Among the Ghouls by M.V. Montgomery
My orders were to dive to the ocean floor to plunder a recently discovered wreck in which the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was thought to have drowned. My pirate overlords had waited a long time...
View ArticleJust Because It’s A Cliché Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Going To Happen by Stephen...
I thought I’d just kill her and dump her in the woods like the rest of them. She fit the profile: young, blonde, cleavage and thighs showing, a necklace I could take as a keepsake. She got in my taxi...
View ArticleOccupation by Denise Long
The door’s bell echoes sharply through the quiet store, startling Veronica from the newspaper in front of her. The pungent odor of an unwashed body assaults her nostrils. Without glancing up, Veronica...
View ArticleThe Day Before by Wayne Scheer
Susan escaped to the bathroom, the only room where she could be alone. This is supposed to be the happiest day of my life, she thought. But if I have to listen to Aunt Bess tell me one more time how...
View ArticleRed Wine, with a Hint of Shoe by Kristina Zdravic Reardon
It happened again over dinner: two glasses of Slovenian wine made me bilingual. “You know?” I say to my second cousin, Marta, “there are at least a hundred čevlje on the tree outside?” Marta looks up...
View ArticleNine Times Out of Ten by Paul Germano
On day three of his repeat performance of the Ninth Grade, Jimmy headed down the hall from his brand-new homeroom full of strangers on route to his old Algebra class where once again he was being...
View ArticleRemembering by Rachel Joseph
Fall. Peppercorns. Butternut Squash. Leaves. Of course, dry crumbling leaves on fire. Don’t forget pumpkins or little white ghosts. Don’t forget apples, cinnamon and miniature treats. Don’t forget,...
View ArticleTunnel Vision by William Cordeiro
I stood naked on a conveyor belt, like a plucked chicken in the maw of a great machine. I was surrounded by whirling fans, monitors wheeling with data, plexiglass walls behind which twisted dendritic...
View ArticleHarry Was Hairy by John Flynn
Harry was hairy. Hair bubbled out of his shirt onto his neck. So when the strange woman walked up to him on the sidewalk, ran her fingers along his collar, and said, “I like a hairy man,” he was...
View ArticleA Year 6 Excursion to Nielson Park by Darren Stein
Like swarming insects we descend upon the park – teeming pre-pubescents settling upon the playground, denying toddlers and astonished mothers the ritual solitude of their daily excursion. Still more...
View ArticleLent by Vincent Carrella
The soft glow of the iron as it heated and that endless whisper, the rush of the flame when the metal began to ripple at the seams. This was something that she liked. She could see, right through her...
View ArticleThree Dream Metaphors by M. V. Montgomery
I. Open Book/ Open to Interpretation At an academic conference, the task at hand for the featured speaker was to explicate an ancient scroll decorated with runes. The scroll was projected onto a screen...
View ArticleIn Sickness and in Health by Wayne Scheer
It happened suddenly. A simple walk to the mail box caused his chest to tighten. He gasped for breath as if he had run a marathon. It went away as soon as he rested, so he told himself it was nothing...
View ArticleA Tough Nut to Crack by Phillip Temples
Pete turned the “nut” over and over with his paws, sniffing it wildly as he did so. After hours of gnawing, he had almost cracked its strange, outer shell. It was surely a tough nut to crack, he...
View ArticleFather by Victoria Webster-Perez
Father: the one who died too young. Cancer ate his kidneys, but the bile ate his heart. I hated my envy: the shadow below his collarbones, the pointed edge of his hips. I hated him for giving up....
View ArticleOn “Stuff” by Ron Singer
stuff: n., common: (1) (mildly negative):a clutter of undifferentiated material objects. “We have too much stuff.” (2) (jocularly positive):a joyful, zany plenitude, as in the...
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