I Didn’t Know There Were People Like That

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

by John Bruce

Once I answered a help-wanted ad for a network engineer.

They had an extra requirement: the candidate should have strong writing skills, since they wanted a lot of documentation. Well, I’d done a lot of network engineering, I’d also written network manuals, and I’d majored in English. I sent in my resume – like any good player in the job market, I had several versions. I sent them the one with the English major listed on it.

A few days later, the hiring manager gave me a call. We talked about my network experience, and we talked about majoring in English. That seemed good enough; he asked me to come in for an interview. “It’s really interesting,” the manager said to me when I came in. “Not many people major in English and wind up in this kind of work.” The guy gave me a technical question-and-answer on what I knew about networks, and he realized that yes, I knew network engineering. And I could write.

”Have you done much with writing outside the technical field?” he asked after a while.

”I’ve had a few things in the local alternative press,” I said. “But it’s just a hobby.”

”It’s really interesting that you’ve kept it up.” We chatted a little more about that. I told him I actually kept reading, too, reading the same writers they had you read as an English major.

”There’s no money in it,” I said. “For most people, it really can’t be anything but a hobby.”

”I should be up front with you about one thing,” the guy told me. “We’ve already made an offer on this job. The guy hasn’t accepted it yet, but he could, so since we’ve already got the offer out, you need to understand that the guy could take it, and he’d be the one we hire.”

”Sure,” I said. The guy had just told me he’d wasted my time, of course.

”I really wanted to talk to you, though,” he said. “I really wanted to meet someone who’d kept up his interest in English and writing after he’d graduated. It’s really been interesting talking to you. In fact, that was why I called you in. I didn't know there were people like that.”

Thanks.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
John Bruce’s writing has appeared, or will appear, in The Los Angeles Reader, The Dartmouth Review, serious-lit press, Fiction on the Web, Cantaraville, Bartleby Snopes, Diddledog, Eunoia Review, Fiction at Work, The Journal of Truth and Consequence, Long Story Short, The Toucan, Lyrical Ballads, Pear Noir!, Lowestoft Chronicle, Underground Voices, and Word Riot. He has degrees in English from Dartmouth College and the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

 

Her Song

Original photo by V T on Unsplash, modified with AI

by Huina Zheng

When my daughter came home from school, she didn’t call out to me like she usually did. She changed into her slippers by the door, her lips pressed into a thin line.

I opened my arms to hug her. She turned slightly and slipped past me.

“I’m fine,” she said. She didn’t look at me. Then she walked into her room and closed the door.

I stood there. That afternoon, her homeroom teacher had messaged me on WeChat. She had been class president for two years, but this time she lost the election by three votes.

Just three votes.

I knew that feeling. In seventh grade, I slipped from the top five in my class to the twenties. My mother stopped me in the living room. Her finger tapped my forehead as she told me I had become lazy, that I had disappointed her. I bit my lip. I didn’t argue. Didn’t explain. Didn’t cry.

When I got back to my room, I could taste blood. I lay on my bed and started singing. I don’t even remember which Faye Wong song it was. I only remember that, little by little, I felt myself calm down.

Now, I heard a song coming from behind my daughter’s door. It was the one she sang all the time. Her voice shook at first. But as she continued singing, it became steadier.

I stood outside her room. I did not knock. I did not ask, “Are you okay?” I hummed along with the melody coming from inside.

She didn’t know I was outside. But I knew that inside that room, she was using the same way I once had to bring herself back.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Huina Zheng either writes as an admission coach at work or writes for fun after work. She lives in Guangzhou, China, with her family.

 

Lady Octopus

Octopus sculpture by Charlotte Loring

by Marie Anderson

Lausen stared through the window at the octopus on the wall of Aunt Schik’s Art Gallery. Her octopus! Painted with acrylics in purple, red, and blue, with fierce green marble eyes. Eyes that had seen what had happened to Lausen. The body and eight legs sculpted from newspapers, paper towels, aluminum foil, and, if Lausen’s mom had for once been truthful, something else. Something Lausen could use right now. Lausen’s mom, sister-in-law to Aunt Schik, had created Lady Octopus ten years ago for Lausen’s 16th birthday. How had she ended up in Aunt Schik’s Art Gallery? With a price tag of $1000 dangling from the lower right edge of the frame!

Lausen flung open the door and marched into the gallery. From behind a counter bookended by potted lush green plants with suspicious-looking leaves of three, Aunt Schik scowled.

“Well, well, well. The Prodigal Girl has returned. What have you been doing lo these many months, Dear?”

“Recovering, Aunt Schik. That shouldn’t surprise you.”

“Have you an appointment, Dear?”

“That’s my octopus! What’s she doing here?”

“Your late mother gave it to me, Dear.”

“She’s mine! And you’re lying. You stole her off the wall in my bedroom after Mom died.”

“I wouldn’t dream of stealing, Dear. If you’d wanted it, why did you leave it behind when you moved out? And why didn’t you scurry back and claim it after your poor mother passed? I don’t recall seeing you at her celebration of life.”

“So you did take her! Mom didn’t give her to you! I want her back!”

Lausen strode to the octopus, grabbed the frame, yanked, but it stayed fast to the wall.

“You may certainly purchase it, Dear. I can offer you a ten percent family discount. Though a daughter who can’t bother to show up to help her ailing mother, who can’t bother to deal with all the tasks involved after someone departs these mortal coils, has perhaps lost her right to be considered family.”

Angry tears spilled, blurring Lausen’s eyes. “You of all people know why that happened. And if you’ve conveniently forgotten, ask your husband. My uncle. My mom believed her baby brother over me. Her daughter. I’d always be her baby girl, she’d once told me. Hah.”

“False memories, Dear. Perhaps planted by an incompetent therapist.”

“She’s mine. I want her back.”

“Repeating that won’t make it happen, Dear.”

Lausen clenched her fists. Eyeballed the distance between her fists and Lady Octopus’s head. She turned to face Aunt Schik. “So what will make it happen? Dear.”

“$900. Cash, not check, not credit card, not crypto. Dear.”

Lausen nodded, turned back to her Octopus, and rammed her fist into the beautiful, doomed invertebrate’s head.

Aunt Schik shrieked. “What the hell? I’m calling the cops!”

Lausen pulled green $100-bills from the shattered head. Stuffed them in her pockets and ran out the door. She’d count them later, but no doubt there was plenty to keep her numbed for a while.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━

Marie Anderson is a Chicago area married mother of three millennials and a grandmother of Summer Marie. About 120 of her stories have appeared in about 100 publications. She leads and learns from a local public library's writing critique group and is an occasional first reader for the publication, Five Minutes. She also currently volunteers as a reader/evaluator for Flash Fiction Magazine.

Charlotte Loring is a high school senior in the Chicagoland area. She combines mixed media artwork to express emotion, realism, and nature. You can find more of her artwork here.

 

Again

by Jon Fain

I was getting over one, being careful, but I’m a sucker for a woman who laughs at my jokes. When we ended up together in the kitchen, our conversation began with remarks about the other guests. Then we trolled out the occasional minor confession, had some hits here and there. The best part was that it had been free of the dull usual—nothing of kids, or houses, no talk about jobs.

Now a couple of days after the party we were having lunch. Ann told me I’d been in one of her dreams.

I’d heard the same thing from a guy in the men’s room at work, the week before. I knew his face—in that way who he was—but not his name. His cube is on the far side of the space, across the sea of dividers. Over there, their computers make the calls to customers, not take them in.

As I dried my hands under the machine, he turned from the sink where he was washing and told me he had dreamed about me. I misunderstood at first; I thought he was coming on to me, his line.

In his dream we had been in the company lunch room. Something he was working on was missing and he was sure I was responsible. But he knew I was a professional house watcher and he didn’t want to bother me while I was on duty.

As for Ann’s, in her dream that she told me about we were at my house. In this one I was a Catholic, one of many kids.

“Is that like your family?” she asked.

“Close,” I said, though it wasn’t.

“They didn’t like me,” Ann went on. “So you drove me home.”

“That’s it?”

The table was so small our hands almost touched. I gripped my wine glass as if now that it was empty it might fly away. Like the guy’s at work, it wasn’t much of a dream. And that was disappointing because except for rare circumstances I never remembered mine.

The food arrived. She looked at her watch. She was dressed much nicer than me. No doubt she had a nicer job too.

“So what do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked.

She laughed like I hoped she would. It was something from the party. In the kitchen, a man nearby had said it to a woman, his line. Maybe a half hour later, Ann and I still in the same spot, we heard him try it on another woman. We couldn’t help it; we’d both cracked up.

“Oh I don’t know,” she said. “What about you?”

I took my sunglasses off the table and put them on.

“A professional house watcher,” I said.

She kept smiling, didn’t get it, but nodded like she wanted to.

I didn’t need a watch to look at. I’d wait as long as I had to, for her laugh to come again.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jon Fain’s micro fiction has appeared in Blink-Ink, The Dribble Drabble Review, 50-Word Stories, Molecule, ScribesMICRO, Sudden Flash, The Woolf, and elsewhere. https://www.chillsubs.com/profile/jonfain

I'll Time You

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

creative non-fiction
by Jillian Schedneck

My college roommate was afraid to leave our room. She needed something from the kitchen—perhaps a utensil, or to check on whatever she had simmering—but between her and that quiet task lay the lounge, thick with the other girls from our suite. We sat on our twin beds while she fretted. I offered to go instead, but the task was too specific. It had to be her.

What was she afraid of? Our suitemates were talking and laughing as usual, orbiting the shared lounge with their jokes and stories I was never part of. My roommate, more friendly and likeable, usually floated among them with ease, while I stayed at the edges, if I joined at all. But tonight she was worried they’d draw her in. She couldn’t manage small talk, couldn’t summon levity, or even pretend to smile. I wasn’t exactly sure why, only that I’d seen this before. Some nights, the world outside our room was too much for her.

“I’ll time you!” I shouted, the plan forming as I spoke. “If anyone talks to you, just say, ‘Can’t talk—Jillian’s timing me!’ and dash back!” She laughed, then quietened. And then, out of options, she agreed.

She raced out of our bedroom as I began my count. I imagined her in the kitchen, completing whatever vital task had sent her there. I heard her say something to the other girls, like, “I’m being timed!” I listened to her nervous giggle. And then she returned.

“Twenty seconds!” I said. “That must be some kind of record.”

We lay back on our beds, our heads on our pillows, laughing.

I was glad, most of all, that she’d returned, that at least on this night, she preferred me, even though our suitemates were louder, flashier, part of social worlds I had no access to or interest in. But I did have something they didn’t. With me, she felt safe. I never considered that my roommate might be depressed, or anxious, or caught in thoughts that didn’t quite line up with the world around her, only that on this one night I could give her some relief.

Years later, I still use that trick. My family and I time each other often. “Go! Close the curtains—quick! I’m timing you!” “C’mon, get the chicken out of the freezer! Ready, one, two, three...”. Sometimes the other family member even falls for it, but we always laugh. Every time, I think of my roommate, that moment, and how, more than twenty years later, she killed herself.

She was the one who everyone liked. I only lived in that dorm suite because she invited me—under her good grace, her kind eyes and infectious laugh. I didn’t know what she battled, not clearly enough to name it. When I saw the news on social media, in a tribute post with photos of her smiling beside her husband and children, I couldn’t believe it.

And then I could.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jillian Schedneck writes speculative fiction and memoir. Her stories and essays have been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Brevity, Cleaver Magazine, Redivider and elsewhere. Her memoir was published with PanMacmillan. Her work has been chosen as a notable essay in the Best American Essays series and won multiple Solas Awards for Travel Writing. She lives in Canberra, Australia, with her partner and two children. Follow her work at jillianschedneck.com.

 

Sunset at Independence Pier

Photo by AHMAD BADER on Unsplash

by Phyllis Rittner

Look! he shouts. It’s enormous! I follow my husband’s finger as a blazing amber ball of sun hangs precariously low over the water, its wide beam reflecting the light ripples of the Atlantic. I grab my camera, race toward the shore. I pass families stamping out barbecue pits, hauling giant coolers toward the parking lot, all oblivious to this spectacle. As I fumble with my lens, the ball dips lower like a giant egg yolk, dropping behind docked boats and empty park benches.

I run toward the pier, past the young boys and their fathers. Heads down, they cast fishing poles into the ocean, converse in Spanish in hushed tones. Just this afternoon, as we spread our picnic blanket on the sand, we spotted a young family nervously scanning the park for agents. The wife kept pointing to a suspicious unmarked van at the park’s entrance, the same van I had surreptitiously taken photos of earlier. !Nosotros tenemos que irnos ahora! she implored. But the husband refused to leave. They argued a bit, some of which I gleaned from my rusty high school Spanish. Finally the wife pulled her toddler son in her arms, gathered her things and left her husband alone on the pier.

Hurry! I hear my husband’s voice call in the distance. Catch it before...

The sun, now a fiery, succulent tangerine, drops deeper, falls between the lace of tree branches. I snap photos on the pier, try to capture the last ounce of this day, this fleeting moment of reverence, but all I can think of is the young wife from this afternoon. Is she stirring soup in her kitchen, watching the local news, her son balanced on her hip?

The sky darkens and the weeping willows sway in the breeze. Suddenly my husband is beside me, slips an arm around my waist. We stand on the pier for a long time, watch the fishermen cast out their poles, patiently waiting for a bite.

Not much left now but minnows, he says flatly.

Is it safe? Now that it’s dark?

Everybody’s gotta eat. There’s an ache in his voice. It matches the ache in my chest. The one I’ve tried to ignore as the sun warmed my shoulders, as the surf caressed my toes.

Look papa! We turn to watch a young boy struggle with his pole, trying to pull a fish from the ocean. His father steadies his grip and together they fling the pole high into the air. Lo tengo! the boy yells, jumping up and down. His father laughs, plops a mackerel into their bucket, lifts his son high onto his shoulders. Mira, mira! he shouts to the fishermen. Mi hijo! There is applause as the boy waves his hands in triumph.

We walk silently to the parking lot, holding hands. I am grateful the van I saw earlier is gone. I turn back, search the pier for a glimpse of father and son. I finally find them through my lens, still in their victory pose, celebrating their conquest. I zoom onto their fading silhouette, capture it seconds before it disappears.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Phyllis Rittner loves all things flash. Her work can be found in Fictive Dream, Emerge Literary Journal, Portrait of New England, Wrong Turn Lit (Best Microfiction nominee), and others. She can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/phyllis.rittner

 

Before the Law

Photo by Bruna Santos on Unsplash

by Franz Kafka
Translation by Ian Johnston

Now and then, we publish vintage stories from historic authors. This was originally published in 1915.

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body.

The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague. Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his work typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The term Kafkaesque has entered the lexicon to describe situations like those depicted in his writings. His best-known works include the novella The Metamorphosis (1915) and the novels The Trial (1924) and The Castle (1926). His work has widely influenced artists, philosophers, composers, filmmakers, literary historians, religious scholars, cultural theorists.

 

They Don't Want Me on the Jury

Photo by Jeremy McGilvrey on Unsplash

by R.K. West

His lawyer says it was consensual. I think, “Really? In a filthy parking garage in 40-degree weather?” He says she liked it rough. I think she probably liked her nose more.

When the prosecutor asks if there is anything to impede my ability to make an impartial decision, I am tempted to point at this arrogant prick who strutted into the courtroom radiating privilege and contempt. Or his attorney who used pretrial publicity to warn that this could ruin the promising career of a gifted athlete. “What else has been ruined?” I might ask.

But I just smile and say “No.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
R.K. West is a former travel blogger living in the Pacific Northwest. Credit: This story originally appeared at 101 Words.

The Secret of a Happy Marriage

Photo by EIGHTPRESSION on Unsplash

by Ed Kratz

Martha and Ben sat across from each other at the breakfast table. Martha held her section of the paper in front of her face, reading. Once in a while, one hand would dart out and grab her scone for a bite and put it back, while Martha kept her paper in position.

Her face still behind the paper, Martha said, "So we're on for spending Saturday at my sister's house and doing the yard sales."

"We have a garage full of junk. We don't need any more." Ben said. He took the gun he had hidden on his lap and rested it on the table. He squinted his eyes and stared at Martha.

"We'll stay overnight. Then we can have lunch at the deli with the great corned beef the next day. You love their corned beef." Martha said.

"I hate corned beef."

"I've got it all set."

"I said I hate corned beef." Ben banged the gun on the table. "I hate yard sales. And I hate your sister."

He banged the gun again. "Do I have your attention?"

Martha lowered her paper. She looked at Ben's gun. "I was just getting into this article. I'll try to remember my place. This will not take long."

She folded the paper, put it to her side on the table, smiled and lifted her own weapon.

Ben said, "It's a Glock. So big."

Martha stroked it like a pet. "This is just like that gun in that old movie with Clint Eastwood. You loved that movie."

Ben couldn't speak. With great effort, he raised his weapon an inch. It seemed tiny now.

"Your gun isn't loaded anyway, darling. I unloaded it. You can't hide things from me. I know you well, my love."

"Loaded?" Ben said.

"You've never been good at planning. That's why I manage our 401K."

Ben spun the empty chamber. He shook his head.

"Now, Ben, we've been over this so many times. You can't fool me."

Ben put his gun down on the table. He sobbed like someone accepting great sorrow.

"So, like I said, we'll stay over and have that corned beef platter at the deli."

Ben rubbed his unloaded pistol as if it were a bottle that could call forth a genie that could save him.

"My sister, she said our marriage would never last. But we've proved her wrong, haven't we, dear?"

Ben sobbed as Martha returned to her paper. But in the midst of his crying, he realized he was indeed looking forward to having that rye bread sandwich with the juicy corned beef next Sunday.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Ed Kratz is a retired computer specialist who has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Daily Science Fiction and a few other places.

 

Spectre

Photo by Alex Litvin on Unsplash

by Owen Wyn Jones

Charlie wasn’t invited to the premier, of course. Extras never were. But he booked out a row in the local cinema for the opening night and invited his friends and family. He’d appeared in movies before, but this was the big one. Ever since he was a child, Charlie had loved James Bond. He loved the tuxedos, the cars, the beautiful women. Those movies were what made him want to become an actor, a dream he held on to through forty years working in the civil service.

The part was HOMELESS MAN ON STREET. They didn’t say what the film was upfront, but it was obvious enough from the description they shared. Charlie sent in his headshot, and a few weeks later there he was. On the set of the next James Bond.

They gave him a messy haircut and makeup that was supposed to look like mud. His costume was a grey overcoat, distressed to look old and well-worn. In the scene, James Bond and another character walked down a London street while talking about a computer virus that was going to destabilise the global economy. Charlie’s role was to sit in a doorway and reach out a coffee cup as they passed, like he was begging for change. He tried to look really desperate when he lifted the cup, like a real homeless person would be. It was a good role, for an extra, and he was happy with how he played it.

About an hour into the movie, Charlie recognised the street from his scene, and he gripped his wife’s arm.

“This is the scene?” she whispered.

Charlie nodded, and she passed along the message so that all the row were ready to spot him. James Bond walked down the street, right up to the spot where his character was begging…

Then the film cut to a different angle. You could just see the coffee cup he was holding in the corner of the screen, but Charlie’s character was out of the frame.

James Bond stopped, and there was a close-up of him looking concerned about the computer virus. Then the scene ended.

“Did I miss it?” Charlie’s wife whispered, distraught. “Which one were you?”

Charlie shook his head, “Never mind.”

He tried to make a joke about it after the movie was over, but everyone must have known he was really upset about being cut out of the film.

“At least you got to be on the set for a James Bond,” his wife tried to reassure him in bed that night. “That’s got to be pretty special, hasn’t it?”

“Of course,” Charlie said. “You’re right.”

He didn’t say how boring being on a film set really was. Hours of waiting with no clue what was going on, just to do the same thing over and over again. The only people who would talk to you were other extras, and they were always complaining about something. Normally the quality of the lunch.

Charlie reached over to turn out the bedside lamp. He tried to sound positive. Genuine. “Yes, it was like a dream come true.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Owen Wyn Jones is a new writer from Mid Wales, currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University.

 

Temptation

Photo by hosein solimani on Unsplash

by Leah Mueller

He’s coming downhill while I’m going up. The harsh streetlight illuminates a familiar face. Yeah, it’s Miles. The guy I spent a night with three years ago, before he returned to his ex-wife.

Miles grins when he sees me. “You look great.” He looks damn great himself, but I have a partner and a baby now. “Wanna come to my place?”

Miles lives next door to my mother. Bisbee is that kind of town. I shouldn’t go. My two kids are resting on Mom’s floor. On the other hand, they’ll sleep until morning.

“Sure,” I say. “For a little while.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Leah Mueller's work appears in Rattle, Best Small Fictions, Certain Age, Writers Resist, The Shallot, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc.

 

Boy Soldier

AI-generated image

by Sascha Goluboff

Little Bobby Scofield didn’t want to go to the carnival. He’d rather play with the toy soldiers he’d set up as a battle between the Marines and the Viet Cong, but here he was with his mom, reluctantly walking the Midway the summer before sixth grade, kaleidoscope lights pulsing against a dark sky. Popping balloons at the dart game sounded off like sniper fire.

“Five-minute caricature,” a man called out from a tent behind concessions. He leaned on a snake-headed cane. His hair was white but his face unlined.

“Wouldn’t that be fun?” Bobby’s mom asked.

Bobby shrugged.

“What’s the boy into?” The man ushered Bobby to sit by an easel.

“His army men.”

“Marines, mom.”

She gazed outside, lost again in her own world.

The man sharpened a charcoal stick with his fingernail. He sketched in large loopy strokes. Bobby’s eyelids grew heavy.

Bobby liked to reenact the Battle of Hue City in Vietnam. Maybe if he'd been there – all grown up – he might have saved his dad and his fellow Marines.

The snake cane flicked its tongue.

“You wanna be a hero?” the man asked.

Bobby nodded.

The man handed him the portrait – Bobby in camo.

Bobby stumbled out of the tent into Hue City, leaving his mom behind. Real gun fire crackled across a sooty sky.

Bobby spotted his dad across the rubble and yelled out to him.

His dad turned to him in a flash of recognition. He moved towards Bobby, arms outstretched. A grenade detonated between them. His dad careened backwards in a red shatter. Bobby was thrown against a concrete wall.

When Bobby came to, he felt the snake curled mockingly around his feet.

“Hero,” it hissed.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Sascha Goluboff is a writer, mother, and academic who lives in Virginia. Her personal website is saschagoluboff.com.

A Mourning @ Dairy Queen

Photo by Igor Rodrigues on Unsplash

By Anthony David Vernon

My father told me I once pushed Alonzo Mourning.
But my mother says my dad is a compulsive liar.
My father told me we were in line at a roadside Dairy Queen, I couldn’t have been more than five, and Alonzo Mourning (with his son) was waiting in front of us.
But my mother says that she would never let me spend time alone with my dad when I was that young.
My father told me I pushed Alonzo Mourning at the Dairy Queen on US 1, by the Metro Rail, with the triangular punch yellow roof, the one you couldn’t go inside of.
But my mother says my father has two personalities: John A & John B.
My father told me that I really wanted my ice cream, so I tried to move Alonzo Mourning out of my way.
But my mother says I was never so bold as a child.
My father told me laughingly, “Of course, Alonzo Mourning didn’t move an inch.”
But my mother says my dad likes to make up stories.
My father told me I made my way in front of Alonzo Mourning, and that he grabbed me while apologizing to Alonzo Mourning.
But my mother says my dad would never apologize to anyone for anything.
My father told me that Alonzo Mourning calmly told him, “It’s okay, little man just wanted some ice cream.”
My father says I was too young to remember if I really did push Alonzo Mourning at that now closed-down Dairy Queen.
But my mother says that I have the memory of Ganesha.
My father says he doesn’t recall if I really pushed Alonzo Mourning and doesn’t even recall telling me the story.
But my mother says it is okay if I want my father’s stories to be true.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Anthony David Vernon is a fan of ice cream and knows chocolate is objectively the best flavor of ice cream.

 

Smoking

Photo by Thomas Stephan on Unsplash

by R.K. West

Mike smoked more than anyone else I’ve ever known. He used the last half inch of his cigarette to light the next one, and could keep doing that for hours. Unlike all the other smokers I know, he had no brand preference. He’d consume a pack of Camels one day, and puff away at Marlboros the next. Watching him fire up a menthol Tiparillo with the stub of a Newport, I commented on his lack of brand loyalty, and he laughed. “In the eighties I smoked Virginia Slims almost exclusively,” he said, “because it really pissed off my old man.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger currently hiding out in the Pacific Northwest.

Credit: This piece originally appeared at Six Sentences.

 

Interview with an Artist

Photo by Nemesia Production on Unsplash

By Michael Neal Morris

You lay the iPad on your chest. You start to fall asleep, but don’t quite get there. Setting into the hard pillow, you begin to tell yourself variations on the same story. You are deep, an artist, and you are being discovered, finally. A nice man interviews you, says he wished he’d discovered you much earlier.

You have wise words for the interviewer, but they don’t come, so you just lay there in your mind being philosophical and genial about nothing in particular. There is a voice over and images of you -- having dinner with your partner and children, speaking at a seminar, you volunteering for the animal shelter, people talking with you, you in quiet reflection as you create -- play in a montage as his deep baritone intones like a cantor something about your value.

But your back aches and you turn uncomfortably on the bed. You remember your age and try not to repeat the number and the old voice tells you should be ashamed. That no one is interested in your work or will be. That it’s just the breaks and you haven’t done anything in years, nothing to get excited about. That if you are honest, you’re a hobbyist, and the worst kind: someone who talks more than produces.

You get up. Your partner is sleeping quietly, light snores coming from her tired face. You stand and put the iPad on the night table. You go into the bathroom and without turning the light on, piss with practiced precision.

Entering the living room, you push the tiny button on the remote and turn the television on, quickly lowering the volume, lest you wake anyone up.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Michael Neal Morris has published several stories, poems, and essays in print and online. He lives with his family just outside the Dallas area and teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Dallas College’s Eastfield campus.
Michael Neal Morris:
Notes from the Overground, Books on Smashwords, This Blue Monk, Blue Monk Music

 

A Kiss Eternal

Photo by Erick Morales Oyola on Unsplash

by Matt Hollingsworth

CONTENT ADVISORY for suicide.

Sunset. Far below, waves crash, and I’m talking to my wife Melissa, who’s dead and gone because a year ago, she jumped off this sea cliff.

A clinking sound, and a little girl in a nighty emerges from the woods, same strawberry-blond hair as Melissa, flowing in the air as if she were underwater, weightless. She’s hugging a cinder block, bent over by the weight. From the block hangs a chain, down to an ankle shackle, her feet bare, blistered, bloody, and on her neck, she has the same heart-shaped birthmark as Melissa. Before I can stop her, she lumbers past—click clack—and straight off the cliff.

She plummets.

Hits the waves like a bullet.

I can’t let anyone else kill themselves in this cursed place. So I jump after her.

Down. Down. Down. The moment lasts a million heartbeats, and I remember Melissa, the pair of us be-bopping around on Eurail passes, pedaling past Holland’s canals and tulip fields, tidy rows—gold, white, pink—the sky a deep azure; Melissa, radiant in her wedding gown, feeding me cake, and the sugar melts in my mouth, then it’s gone; Melissa, organizing her pills into tidy rows—gold, white, pink—the look on her face broken. Was her final moment like this, containing a lifetime? In that other life, did she find happiness?

When I hit, the water is concrete, breaks me. I sink. Hold my breath. Ribs ache. Frigid saltwater burns my eyes. Vertical tangles of kelp surround me, sunlight cutting through the underwater forest, sea motes aglitter like gold dust, and there’s the girl, swaying in the current like more kelp, a serene look on her face. I pump my legs, swim to her.

Behind her, a man giggles bubbles. Also weighed down by a cinder block. Next to him, a woman, a crab claw jutting out of her mouth. And more people. The entire kelp forest is people, all anchored to the bottom, all smiling, clothes billowing off their barnacle-encrusted bodies, fish nibbling at their eyeballs.

And here beside me—the girl, she’s my Melissa, all grown up, and she whispers my name clear as an echo in a conch shell, and I kiss her, and my ribs don’t ache anymore, and the saltwater doesn’t burn my eyes, and she sucks the breath from my lips and hugs me and never lets go.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
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.

 

In a Heartbeat

Photo by Miriam G on Unsplash

by Elliott Fielding

Dispatch wakes me for a courier job. It’s a donor heart, which means a four hour countdown. I’m up and out the door, instant coffee in hand, in under seven minutes.

Ground transportation is the backup plan or I would’ve had more warning. Mountain weather is wild and high winds grounded the air-medical helicopter. The wind is gusting still, pushing my car around as I drive to the hospital.

Once I have the heart in hand, safe in its special transport cooler and documented with pages of paperwork, only three hours remain on the cold ischemia countdown. Snow is falling now, sweeping sideways across the road. I don’t need my coffee: the adrenaline keeps my eyes wide.

When there’s two hours to go, my hands are cramping, clenched tight on the steering wheel. Dispatch lets me know that I-70 has closed behind me. Traffic, already thin, gets lighter as people exit the interstate, pull over to the shoulder, or slide off the ice and into drifted snow.

One hour left. It’s a race: miles versus minutes—scalpels prepped and poised in Denver. I think about the heart next to me. I call it “the heart” but it’s a life I’m transporting. It’s the donor’s past and, if I can get there in time, the recipient’s future. I lean forward, take the middle of the empty highway, and accelerate, snowflakes flashing white in the beams of my headlights.

It happens on a curve. I don’t brake hard, I know better, but I’m crossing lanes, sliding sideways toward the drop-off and there’s no traction. At the last moment my wheels cut through softer snow to grip pavement inches from the guardrail and I’m swerving back to center. My heart is beating hard. I think of the donor, name unknown, who died in a heartbeat at age 30, maybe on this very road. I make a choice. I slow down. I pull over. The only life I’m carrying now is my own.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Elliott Fielding is a Colorado scientist and emerging author who weighs phrases and measures words. Xyr short narratives have appeared or are forthcoming in ScribesMICRO, MoonPark Review, The Examined Life, Five Minutes and elsewhere. https://elliottfielding.carrd.co/

 

Baptism by Falling

by Kayla Cain

Fight or flight.

But she can’t fight gravity.

A splashing crash shocks all her senses. Where is she? This isn’t Momma’s hospital… or Prickly Pear State… or Burgers. She’s in her car, moving past trees, but this isn’t the road.

Gurgling and sucking sounds bubble from the engine. The car tilts downward as it moves forward. Cold water swallows Cynthia’s toes, ankles, legs–

She tries to open the door, but the water pressure keeps it closed.

Cynthia’s mind panics, but she doesn’t have time for that. Her body takes over. Hands unbuckle the seatbelt, and then fingers press the buttons to roll down the front windows, which begin sliding open with an electronic hum. Cynthia lifts her legs into the seat, preparing to climb out as soon as she can, but the window stops opening halfway down. Then the passenger side window rattles, stutters, and stalls too.

Cynthia’s fingers move to the buttons for the back windows, but the plastic only clicks with no response.

It’s too late. She’s lost power.

Her best chance of escaping the sinking car is through the passenger side window, so she splashes over to it. There is not much space to squeeze through, but it doesn’t look impossible. Water pours onto Cynthia as she clings to the top of the glass and tries to push it farther open. Fails. She shakes it with the hopeful frustration it might break or loosen. It doesn’t budge. Then, face pressed against the car ceiling, she takes the deepest breath of her life, and the river replaces the last of the air.

Cynthia reaches her arms, head, and neck out the window. She squirms and manages to shove her chest through. Pushing with her legs against the seat, and pressing her hands against the top of the door, she fights to squeeze her hips free, bruising like a masseuse applying too much pressure, like being smashed, ripped, but it’s either possibly tear herself in half or definitely drown.

She thrusts through the pain, encouraged by each inch of progress. It hurts worse before it gets better, but the digging and scraping finally release, and she swirls into the current.

Desperate for air, she tries to swim to the surface, but…

She can’t find it.

Water burns her eyes, and the same grayish green shades everything. Tumbling through the current, her smothering hair disorients her further. She flails her limbs in an attempt to gain control, but this exhausts her and fills her chest with fire.

She strains her eyes, unsure of up and down, but for the first time, she sees something different.

A golden glow.

Hope.

That’s all she has left, so she spends her final energy to reach the compass, the emblem, the cure – whatever it is, it is all.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Kayla Cain teaches high school English and journalism in Central Texas. Her passion is inspiring young people to read and write through example. Read more of her work at kaylacainauthor.com.

Time Finally Gets Fed Up

Photo by Anirudh on Unsplash

by Eirene Gentle

Time used to shrug it off. The defamation, bargaining and fear but it’s sick of the lies. Time doesn’t march or stand still. It hasn’t stopped, not even once. It’s had enough of blame. Illnesses aren’t its work but people’s own decisions or luck or who knows what, Time isn’t a seer, it’s just not at fault. Time isn’t wasted and can’t be spent. It’s always money with humans, money, money, money which is never Time, no matter how much people say it. Which is another thing, Time doesn’t heal. Not anything, ever. It’s not interested in your problems. Or you. Time isn’t God, or even god. It would leave all humans in a vat of tar to stop them crawling all over it, chopping it into seconds, minutes, millennia, whatever, but Time doesn’t have power, or tar, or vats. It possesses nothing and doesn’t want to. Time can’t be served. It has no say in your confinement. Or freedom. It won’t go back, not with serums or cells, cold-freezing or plasma. Time has no sense of direction and barely made it to the complaints office. There was a long line and it had to take a number. “It’ll be a while," they said, right to Time’s face.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Eirene Gentle writes, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada. BlueSky: @eireneeleni.bsky.social

 

Paper People

Photo by Ines Gemein on Unsplash

by Jenny Morelli

I wake to itches I can’t scratch, to air tickling my skin, to the reality that I’m drowning in papyrus. Only my face protrudes. I can’t see. Can’t breathe. Can’t speak or scream.

Skin’s brittle. Wrinkled. Ready to tear. So dry. So parchment.

Words skitter across my face like ants into the holes where my eyes should be, latching onto my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams.

Words swirl into those holes, form pupils to let me see what I’m hearing. A rip-rip-tear frees a paper person from the page, then another, then another. Paper people surround me, bound silent by words, tethered to the page with trains of sentences trailing behind them in long shadows like capes, like answers to questions we cannot ask.

We’re stuck to the page, pop-up palimpsests of all the stories we’ve ever read, of all the characters we’ve ever met, of all the selves we’ve longed to be.

Here we remain. Faceless. Mouthless. Silent paper people itchy with letters and words and ideas scampering endlessly over us and under, around us and through. We’re half formed and fully sentient, imprisoned on this page, praying to the paper gods a candle won’t tip and singe our crinkled cheeks, praying to the paper gods that hot tea won’t spill, that someone will notice us, will read us and won’t cry fat tears that dissolve us entirely after learning our fate.

I used to dream of climbing into the stories I read to escape my grim reality by dancing with wild things and velveteen rabbits and golden geese, but now that I’m here, I can only hope my imagination can help me arrange these words into an exit, an end, a way out of this nightmare, or else I must succumb to the grim reality that I’m just another avid reader who fell victim to a dream she desperately wanted fulfilled.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
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, and Bottlecap Press for four poetry chapbooks. Check out her website for more: JennyMorelliWrites.com