Fiction
Twelve Days
By Sharon Boyle
My bones jarred and folded in as I crunched against the side. I vomited, aware of the screams surrounding me and arose carefully, feeling the loose jangling in my left arm. Many others were not so fortunate and lay limp and crumpled or howled in pain, cupping bloody wounds. A gash from a women’s thigh quickened my pulse and I glanced away.
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Beware the Carousel
By Matthew Dexter
Girls in The Gravitron are slutty. At least that’s the rumor in my town. Most fathers think The Gravitron is the dangerous ride. They don’t know the Ferris wheel is the mother of all murderers. Dad never lets me ride The Gravitron. Says the centrifugal force is three times that of gravity. The inertia of my madness moves a little slower. Dad’s always holding me back.
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Fries with Jaybo
By Wayne Gay
I like books. I like the way they open up, like a doorway, like a place you can go into and shut everything else out. I like the way they smell, especially old ones. I can tell whether a book’s good or not by the way it smells. A book is a house, a screen, a picture in a frame; it’s an opening, a window into a different world.
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Acorns
By Isabel Gillard
The little rosy fingers strayed over the older, denser ones, where they lay, inert, on the flowery duvet. ‘Your nail varnish’s still on, Gran: mine’s nearly off.’
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To the Chapel
By Mark Holbrook
I must have been twelve when I slept with the platypus for the first time – a social misfit and a freak of nature sharing a bed. One of us fell into a linguistically anomalous category: a mammal that lays eggs. The other fell into a socially anomalous category: a sensitive, pubescent boy financially and physically unsuited to the rough and tumble of a male only English Public boarding school. We made good bedfellows.
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Flash Fiction
Death without Dying
By Shina Akagawa
If reincarnation existed, my father would want to be born again as a rock.
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Endorsement Deal
By Matthew Dexter
He’s one hit away from dying, one concussion away from irreversible brain damage. The doctor says this about his crack addiction; the head coach says this about his ability to stay in the pocket with that rock a second too late.
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A Blank Page
By Paul Finnigan
A blank page had always struck him as a maudlin prospect. Made him anxious. A blank page, he guessed, was like a baby with the birth wiped off and the first screams just dying down. He remembered that white emptiness staring morosely at him, and his mother, cigarette in hand, standing above him, prodding him to study, to fill pad after pad with inky proofs. Inky proofs of movement.
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The Fisherman
By Ryan Hardgrove
The sky was dark and pressing. Tiny flecks of light held on the ceiling. My skin felt stitched to the asphalt. I peeled myself up to a sitting position, wiped the sleep from my eyes and gazed into a deserted parking lot.
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The Wrong Door
By Vivien Jones
The restaurant was trendy and ill-lit. Laura stumbled towards the Ladies. She’d left her glasses on the table and her napkin was tucked into the belt of her little black dress. The passage was even dimmer than the restaurant. She came to a door and pushed through.
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A Boat Trip
By Edward McWhinney
From the vantage point of a boat, the land, where so recently we walked, took on a lighter shade of daylight. It was an exquisite day for a trip out to Roche’s Point, Jordi’s word not mine. I cracked the tops from two bottles of beer and handed one to my guest. It was a lovely day for a trip.
Inquest
By Jeffrey Miller
He was the one who found Gary slumped over on the front seat of the Olds in the garage on that frigid January morning. Not thinking what he was doing, he remembered turning off the ignition at some point, either before or after he administered CPR, again, not thinking clearly.
The Drowning Man
By Kenny Mooney
Black and hollow, an echo in memory ebbing through my mind like a sluggish tide, caught in the brown-blue wake of slowly rolling years. It’s easy to drift when you’ve nothing left.
Rock a Bye
By Valerie O’Riordan
I said I’d get the fucking fags meself. Useless cunt, Theo, nose in a hanky. The hearse was stopped at the lights anyway and the driver was reading the Mirror; I strutted past in me tight black skirt and gave him the finger on the way back, Silk Cut between me lips, thumb to the lighter.
Dread
By Dawn West
When I was a little girl I was terrified of climbing stairs in the dark. I would run like hell to the top, listening to the blood jump in my veins. Sitting on these steps with you, I feel the same. You’re drinking a beer, like you don’t care about campus security, and I’m chewing on my bottom lip, trying not to smoke a cigarette.
Prose Poetry
Storytelling
By Paul French
Her teeth were like moving maize kernels—something which kept his palm flush against the edge of the broad door, letting warm air drift out to a nose whose rings sprouted from skin ready to cough a bolus of dirt onto his shoes; her tale however, clean, a helix of reasons that furiously wound to reach that yes or no finish line.
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An Invoked Diligence
By Desmond Kon Shicheng-Mingdé
All worthwhile sympathies ruled out, the dakinis are lagging in their step. “Don’t mind their petty worked-up fears,” the First Dakini says, always discreet, discerning and fully at ease with a public diplomacy.
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Nonfiction
An Audacious Eulogy
By Wanda Ernstberger
Some stories should never be told. At least they shouldn’t be told until no one can exact revenge on the teller. Grandpa passed away over five years ago, and Grandma died last month, so this is my eulogy; only instead of expounding on the good qualities of generations past, in keeping with the Scriptures, I will only present the truth—Grandma was no poet.
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A Case of Identity
By Malcolm Forbes
In 1954 the book A Woman in Berlin was published in America. Its author, a rape victim at the hands of marauding Russian soldiers, chose to remain anonymous. Her wishes were respected and her identity was kept under wraps for the rest of her life.
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On Their Salad Break
By David Francis
They all have short fine hair, tied back, and drawn faces with cruel or at least cold eyes. One is a blonde. The blonde has on a sleeveless – from which her bra strap intrudes on her slender skim-milky arms – flower-pattern granny dress and white tennis shoes.
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The Benevolent-Faced Bull
By JoAnne McKay
When you visit the British Museum run straight to room 10c, Assyria: Khorsabad. Here, in one object, the museum’s intention to ‘show the world to the world’ is realised. Look at the great thing. It will fill your eye, so gaze on it.
Two Weeks Old Forever
By Hartley Pool
As midnight traces its way into early morning, I fight the tiredness and I watch him, just watch him. He is fighting as well. Those tiny arms jerk spastically outwards, fists punching the air and that chubby, grandfatherly face contorts in and out of a yawn that he does not understand. I wait to see if my son will give in to the sleep that clearly wants to come, or start agitating towards a scream.
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