Debugged
by Jenny Morelli
It seemed innocent at first, all those tiny little bugs marching by, each with a crumb they filched from a chip I dropped, but as I watched them parade across the porch, they grew larger and larger, from the size of a rice grain to the size of my pinky to the size of my pen, then the size of my shoe.
They grew big as the thoughts in my mind as the words on this page, as the panic wedged sideways in my throat as they stood on their hind legs to the height of my door, as they pushed that door open and greeted me face to face, their heads swiveling left and right, their red eyes blinking, their mouthparts clicking as if trying to speak.
They surrounded me. Towered over me. Tilted their heads to inspect me as I tried to scream, tried to swat them away, tried to run through their legs and skitter across my floor filching crumbs in my path as they reached for the pest-control spray to shoo me from the house that was no longer mine, and all because I forgot to debug my computer.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything around her. She’s published in several literary magazines including Red Rose Thorns, Spillwords, Scars tv. This is her fourth poetry chapbook with Bottlecap Press. Check out her website for more: JennyMorelliWrites.com
A Leviathan’s Love
by Matt Hollingsworth
Lush valleys and placid waters, a boy in a boat with his father—who months ago told him his mom drowned in this lake—mealworms writhing in sawdust, the boy sucking his bleeding thumb, scarlet dripping off a fishhook, the father calling him worthless fuckwit, the boy crying, ripples from a gigantic fin in the water, splashing, rocking, jaws as big as the boat chomping on the screaming father, swallowing him, then silence, the leviathan’s glistening blue skin, its eye up close, familiar—the boy’s mom—a tear, a wink, and the creature submerges.
A boy in a boat, alone.
Matt Hollingsworth is a neurodivergent human and award-winning color artist for Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. His prose has been nominated for Best of the Net and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year and has appeared or is forthcoming in Interzone, Tales to Terrify, Uncharted, and Bourbon Penn. matthollingsworth.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthollingsworth.bsky.social
Roger disapproves. Of you.
By Michael Girardin
“Look at this guy!” Roger thought.” Flying down Granville, middle of the day, gotta be at least 40, middle of the road, traffic everywhere , on a skateboard! A fucking skateboard. Moron. I bet he combs his beard in the mirror and does action poses. I hope somebody hits him. Not real bad, just graze him, maybe break his skateboard. Make him cry. What’s the Cop doing? Nothing. Of course. What’s wrong with him? Stop this toolbox before he kills someone. Or himself. Come on, do something, anything, you’re a cop, hit him with your nightstick, dipshit.
Look at them. The robots. Glued to their phones. Nothing. Nobody sees or cares if it’s not on a screen. Jesus Christ could come back, riding Haley's comet, step down off the cross and make me a grilled cheese sandwich and they wouldn’t say boo. Yo! Pinhead! Pound that phone up your ass! Yeah. I’m talking to you. What are you going to do about it? That’s what I thought, move it along numbnuts. Oh, great, look at this guy. What, he’s gonna sit on the bench here? Beside me?? Fuck off goldilocks, my bench.”
Roger’s mind wandered while he waited for the bus. He was a man without a lawn to tell people to get off of and it had hardened his heart in his later years.
But that didn’t matter. It was time to testify.
Roger had the bench to himself, and there was a nice little crowd, waiting for their prospective buses. Seventy, but still nimble, he hopped up on the bench and began at full blast, as usual. A little man with a very big mouth.
“LISTEN UP PEOPLE AND LISTEN GOOD! UNDERSTAND THE TIME FOR LISTENNG IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE AND SOON IT WILL BE TOO LATE! PULL YOUR NOSES OUT OF YOUR PHONES AND YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR BEHINDS. IF YOU PAY ATTENTION AND ONLY IF YOU DO, THERES IS STILL A SMALL CHANCE FOR YOU TO AVOID HELLFIRE AND DEMON ABUSE. FIRST OF ALL, BEFORE I START LET ME JUST MAKE ONE THING CLEAR: JESUS WAS NOT A HIPSTER! EVEN THOUGH HE HAD A BEARD AND SANDALS! HE DID NOT WALK OVER A SEA OF IRONY. HE HAD NO NEED FOR KOMBUCHA OR SMOOTHIES. HE DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR THOSE THINGS. HE WAS TOO BUSY SAVING THE WORLD AND HELPING BLIND MEN SEE. PLUS, JESUS HAD A JOB. A REAL JOB. JESUS WAS A CARPENTER, A WOODWORKER, A TIMBER TECHNICIAN. HE DIDN’T MAKE A LIVING PRESSING BUTTONS, COUNTING WIDGETS IN THE SKY. IT WAS REAL WORK. HARD WORK, MAN’S WORK”. By this time several people at the bus stop had turned around and were staring at Roger, most with clear expressions of loathing, a couple with stunned looks on their faces. They’d seen this in the movies but never in real life, on a real street corner. One young man with a backpack said in a clear resonant voice, "Please, can someone make him stop?” Roger was heating up.
“MOST OF YOU PROBABLY HAVEN'T HEARD OF THAT. HARD WORK. LOOK IT UP ON YOUR GOOGLER. ONE TIME, WHEN HE WAS WORKING JESUS HIT HIS THUMB WITH A HAMMER. KNOW WHAT HE SAID WHEN THAT HAPPENED? HE SAID, 'JESUS CHRIST MY GODAMNED THUMB!' JESUS DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR FANCY TALK. JESUS TOLD IT LIKE IT IS AND LIKE IT WAS.” At this point the backpack guy had had enough and said, “Christ, can’t somebody stop this guy?" A murmur of agreement flowed through the small crowd. Emboldened the kid barked out, “Hey buddy, Jesus called, said to tell you the bus to Crazytown doesn’t run on Mondays.” The crowd tittered its approval.
Fuel meet fire. Roger was luxuriously furious. The way he liked it.
“AGAINST ALL REASON AND LOGIC JESUS LOVES YOU. FOR ME THE JURY IS STILL OUT. I MEAN, LOOK AT YOU. CONDEMNED AND ON YOUR WAY TO BEING ROASTED LIKE A SUCKLING PIG. BUT ITS NOT TOO LATE! IT’S NOT TOO LATE! IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO SAVE YOURSELF! PLEASE LISTEN! PLEASE. YOU HAVE TO DO ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS…” Roger stopped, paused, and looked to the left, squinting.
His tone changed, “BUT I'M SORRY! MY BUS IS HERE ! I'LL LEAVE YOU WITH THIS: WHEN YOU'RE ROASTING IN HELL, DON’T FORGET, IT'S ONLY FOREVER!”
He leapt off the bench like an angry Leprechaun on a mission, elbowed his way to the front of the line, scampered onto the crowded bus and shamed a pimply teenager out of the seat he was occupying in the senior/ handicapped section. He stared him down like Moses stared down the Red Sea.
Once the bus started rolling, settled into his rightful seat, he yelled out, even louder,” ARE YOU SAVED? HAVE YOU HEARD?” Instantly the bus driver shot back, “Hey don’t think I don’t remember you, pal!. We are not going to go through this again! Zip it or beat it! “
Roger zipped it and settled into the rhythm of the ride.
For the first time today, Roger had a smile on his face.
Michael Girardin is a veteran actor living in Canada.
Equilibrium
by Mark Sabourin
She called to him. “Too far,” he heard, “Larry, come back.” Ahead, the sea wrinkled beneath the midmorning sun. Released from the current’s insistent tug, he swam a languid breast stroke. Ahead, a retreating cruise ship bobbed and shrank toward a distant horizon, a thousand kilometres of open sea, then Cuba.
A dozen years ago they’d both ignored the signs, “Danger,” “Strong currents.” They were drunk. They’d picked their way over the rocks to the water’s edge and smoked a joint. Then, they’d stripped and pushed through the heaving surf to the point where the sea’s flow and ebb met on equal terms, one pulling them back to shore, the other urging them out to sea. They’d hung there as if the currents should decide.
This time, they’d padded along a sandy patch into water no more than knee deep, swinging their son between them like a pendulum, and Larry stared out to the pinnacle where the waves broke and the cove opened up to the sea. “This is far enough,” she’d said. Jeremy laughed as his legs swung through the surf, and they laughed with him. They swung him higher and higher, till he cried out when his foot struck a rock. They retreated to shore and examined the scrape on his instep, the two of them.
“Mommy, I want to go back,” Jeremy sobbed.
She took him in her arms. Larry looked past them at Rastas, the Bob Marley bar. A half dozen hurricanes must have blown through, and still it stood exactly as he remembered it.
“Back where?” Larry asked. “The water? The hotel? Home?”
“Larry!” Her voice called again over the water. Fainter. Shrill.
He filled his lungs, dropped his head and dove. He kicked and pushed and was swallowed up by the grey ocean. He kicked hard and felt the fire rise in his lungs until he hung, suspended, neither rising nor falling. He hung still as a moment, surrounded by a fog of water. East, west, forward, back – he had no reference point, no clear direction, so turned to the ocean floor. He looked for rocks that marked a rise in the seabed, and sand that marked its fall.
Mark Sabourin took a 30-year hiatus from fiction writing to earn a living writing as a business writer. With that taken care of, he's back. His "The Law of Gravity" appeared in The Antigonish Review, #99. He is hard at work on a novel.
I am sorry to tell you this by text
by Kara Gillies
but I am breaking up with you. It is not because we have wildly divergent aspirations, although your dream of a monster mansion and burgeoning bank balance conflicts with my minimalist style and critique of late-stage capitalism; nor is it because we have different tastes in movies, with you fueled by endless remakes of the Fast and the Furious while I snuggle in the comfort of Hallmark holiday specials, even in the Spring. It is not at all because I favour sleeping on my own, star-fished across the bed’s full breadth, not coveting half the covers at 3 am. It’s not because I am tired of picking up your discarded socks or half-drunk cups of coffee or fragile self esteem. It is not because I found a crisp business card tucked into the inner pocket of your grey suede handbag embellished with a handwritten number that I did not call and that was not answered by a woman with a voice like 30-year-old Scotch who stumbled when asked how she knows you; it is not that this bombshell ignited memories of my mother yelling at my father through tears and smashed plates and slammed doors, one of which did not hit his ass on the way out; and it is certainly not related to my therapist’s assertion that I have an avoidant attachment style and tend to walk away from conflict.
It is simply because I feel I am too young for this commitment and have decided to keep my options open.
Kara Gillies is a former sex worker and current non-profit leader in Vancouver, Canada. She is new to creative nonfiction and is dipping her toes into micro and flash.
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