If you could sit totally still for long enough on the big rock by the sycamore, the catfish would peek out tentatively from the hollow underneath and then would move out, browsing along the bottom. A few minutes later, the ribbon snakes would slither down the honeysuckle, gliding back and forth across the pool with their heads raised barely above the surface. This time a gray watersnake had joined them, below the kingfisher’s perch, half in the water and half in the patch of jewelweed, near where the lone trout lurked in the … Continue reading Joshua Number Eight by E. Hume Covey→
The back of Bill’s neck smells for some reason of peach and is delightfully warm to my lips. He murmurs something I don’t catch but sounds like a note of appreciation. I turn my attention to the tangles of his hair, scented with some fairly pleasant chemical with overtones of coconut. He makes no further comment but squeezes back into my embrace, warm inside his thick toweling bathrobe. I’ve caught him on the landing. The sun streams in through the roof light as if the gods are pouring honey. “What time is it?” he asks. … Continue reading The Cat Goddess of Apartment 15B by Alex Barr→
The Widow Lowery would occasionally sleep with Mr. Oshiro. It was, in small-town parlance, a well-kept secret. Certainly, nothing in Mr. Oshiro’s nature tempted him to tell anyone. He’d lived in this pit-stop borough off the interstate for more than ten years. In all that time, he struggled with his adopted language. One who understood him, though, was the youthful postmaster and aspiring city councilman, Mr. Garrity, with whom Mr. Oshiro had regular business. Every week, Mr. Oshiro, who made a living doing odd jobs, would seek the postmaster’s assistance with some kind of package. … Continue reading Special Delivery by Daniel Pié→
Here are the two things I can remember that together most starkly display the change. The second one was a plastic cooler piled full of striped bass, all dead. The first was when I was younger, maybe seven or eight years old. My parents had a houseguest in from the Netherlands, and we’d shown him the whole city. He played the bells on a Monday night, while the people sat around on picnic blankets and listened, and I ran around the grounds with a friend, chasing the lightning bugs. After the recital my mother … Continue reading Water Ice Was The First One by Andrew Snover→
The instant we walk into the next room, which is all photographs—black-and-white rocks casting shadows in a desert, dirty-faced Depression kids and haggard mothers; borrrrring—Van seizes my arm. “Oh. My. God.” She doesn’t have to say anything else; she doesn’t even have to point. The high, silly voice springs from my mouth to her ear without conscious intervention. “Ohh, the Met? Awesome! Let me put on my club shoes!” Van growls through gritted teeth: “Oh—God—my—fucking—feet—hurt—but—I’m—trying—to—hide—it!” “He doesn’t even give a shit, man. Great boyfriend.” “I don’t even think he’s her boyfriend.” I squint, tilt … Continue reading Hot Guy From Photography Class by Alice Archer→
Allison did not come to the decision to move in with Gregory lightly. She loved her little apartment, absolutely loved it. It was a source of immense pride and comfort. But she suspected that Gregory might be “the one,” and moving in together was the natural next step. They talked about The Big M only once, admittedly in a cursory fashion, but Gregory did not shy away from talking about the future. Gregory had been pushing the move for weeks. He hated trying to find parking near her building, hated that he had to … Continue reading Allison Moves In by Margie Shepherd→
“How much further down you think it is?” He turned to look at me in the backseat as he drove. Through the front windshield, dark streets I didn’t recognize spread out in confusing perpendiculars. I had booked a place in the North end—somebody’s basement done up all IKEA-chic—because it was close to my mother’s facility. I’d barely been up this way before and never in the dark, on the lonely industrial roads from the airport. He said sorry again, repeated it. We had turned off at an orange Detour sign, below it, another reading, “Road … Continue reading Forehand Drive by Amy Foster Myer→
Bonnie usually loved the drive to Aunt Edda’s house. She’d peer out the backseat window as her mother drove along the section of highway overlooking the car factory where her father and Uncle Henry worked. Smokestacks jutted from the enormous building, filling the air with fluffy clouds. Bonnie always imagined her dad inside the factory feeding a giant furnace, making clouds shaped like cotton candy, just for her. She’d close her eyes and try to change the puff-ball clouds into bunnies with the power of a wish, but it never worked. Dozens of times, her … Continue reading Bonnie’s Spell by Tonja Matney Reynolds→
Once upon a time, there was a woman who wanted to have a baby. Or rather, this woman, named Jane, didn’t particularly care whether she had a baby at the time this story takes place, but her husband, a good, solid man named Jack, felt it was time for the two of them to have a baby, and since she often felt his wishes ought to be hers as well, she also thought it must be time. Every Sunday, the two of them would trudge from their tiny little apartment to church, where they would … Continue reading White by Holly Day→
The morning sun dappled the kitchen wall with an outline of wind-fumbled leaves loosely hanging on trees, cooking in the early morning heat. On the card table, slash, breakfast table, slash, dinner table, the future lay exposed in a circle of plastic cards organized among the ruins of last night’s fast food feast. Her husband called it the “Wheel Of Life”. A wish made real. They could live as they wanted to live, without want, without need, without anything that they didn’t want to do without. A perpetual money machine. “See, it works this way. … Continue reading wish by Harry James→
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