Category: Fiction

Fiction by Idle InkMar 4, 202311:06 am

The Time Traveling Gigolo by Robert Nazar Arjoyan

The modern howl of the train never fails to break the spell. Unless of course it’s synchronal, in which case, choo-choo. Regardless, the sex is phenomenal.

My name is Paty, last name immaterial. That might not even be my first name, just so you know, but it is. Paty from LA. That’s LA like Los Angeles not Louisiana. I’ve hopped around town all my life – from Noho to Venice and all the way to Alhambra – but I was born in Glendale. Living back there now in an old Spanish style bungalow situated in the Tropico district, southwards, bordering Atwater and within a whisper of Los Feliz. I rent from an ancient fiend named Miller. I don’t know if that’s his first name or his last name and I don’t care. 3,500 a month gets sluiced out of my checking and goes into Miller’s moldy old coffers because I no longer have a home – it’s been wrecked. Did you catch on or should I elucidate? No, you’re smart. When I slid the cheap wedding band I’d worn for thirteen years off my finger, I felt OK. Know why? Because underneath the ring, I noticed that my skin there was lighter than the rest of me. I still had a teeny bit of myself left untainted by wasted time and misplaced love.

Fiction by Idle InkMar 4, 202311:03 am

Excavations by Regina Rae Weiss

I’d been here a few weeks in relative peace but now the park was being dug up all around me, and I was having trouble finding out why. At first I thought they were going to excavate and replant the flower beds and shrubberies. I panicked then about being displaced from my comfortable abode in the heart of the ancient rhododendron, which was larger than my last apartment and rent free. Would I have to go back to the west side tunnels? I couldn’t do that. Peggy was probably still marooned over there and she wanted, understandably, to kill me. But I couldn’t go to a shelter either. The city’s shelters bring out my claustrophobia worse than any tunnel ever could.

Fiction by Idle InkMar 4, 202311:01 am

The Other Side by Will Kemp

He was in heaven again, umpiring a school cricket match, when something interrupted his appreciation of an exquisite cover drive.

“Dunc,” Heather whispered, jostling his shoulder under the duvet.

He tried to return to the cricket, but it had gone.

“Duncan…”

Why was she lying behind him? Oh. Holiday. France. First night. The farmhouse only had double beds.

Fiction by Idle InkMar 4, 202310:58 am

Psychopath by David Henson

I’m afraid our 12-year-old son is a budding psychopath. As in he isn’t yet, but I’m scared to death. Hurting animals is a sign, right? I won’t say what he did because it’s too upsetting. Ruth doesn’t want to believe me until I show her what I found in the small lake in the grip of our subdivision. We agree Jacob should see a counselor.

I take Jake by myself to his first session with Dr. Penser because Ruth has a late meeting with her boss. Again. After my son and I sit with Penser together, the doctor asks for some time alone with Jake. The shrink brings Jake out to the waiting room about 30 minutes later. I give the doc a look that says “Well?”

Fiction by Idle InkMar 4, 202310:56 am

Intern by Tom Alexander

The marketing interns were in the break room, holding the Quarter Finals of the World Cup of Crisps, an event that had been dreamt up one bored Friday afternoon. Packets had been bought from the shop, randomly allocated groups and then pitched against each other in a tournament to find the one true champion. In the latest matchup, Josh and Becca were arguing that Prawn Cocktail was superior, while Tony was mounting a firm defence of Beef and Onion.

“You’re crazy,” Josh said. “Prawn Cocktail’s iconic, man. It’s a lifestyle thing. It’s chunky polo necks and wifeswapping in the 70s.”

Fiction by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:10 pm

Island Intensive by Leila Wright

After his introduction, I lead the mantra. May I be Free from Pride. May I Live in Integrity. Through the Grit of Sand, may I become a Pearl. The faces below tilt upward like flowers to the sun. Smiling, I shift my gaze to Arnold, but he stares ahead, his lips turned down. It wounds me deeply, his brusqueness, because I know that I disgust him. I disgust myself. Thirty-two years with Arnold Burgstaller and I am still slow to learn.

“Perhaps, Bronwyn,” he says, looking at the students in the front row, “you could allow me to finish speaking before you jump in. Just something to remember going forward.”

Fiction by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:04 pm

A Quiet Drink with a Sentient Filter Coffee Machine by Robert Garnham

The first and possibly only time that I came across a sentient filter coffee machine, which wheeled itself around on a metal trolley bringing its carafe more or less up to face-height, and thereby encouraging discourse, chit-chat, conversation, took place earlier this year. I was staying at a small business hotel in the town of Woking, having arrived early evening following a day of mindless oblivion at what had been labelled a company seminar and meet / greet, but was more an excuse for head office to show us films about how wonderfully they thought the company was doing, and how exciting the future apparently looked.

The seminar had taken place in the function room of a large multinational hotel in the centre of the town, but because I had signed up for it late, I had been forced to find my own accommodation, and this is why I’d chosen the smaller business hotel, which was a three mile drive out of the town centre. I’d seen the coffee machine in the reception area, somewhat near the computerised self-check-in screen, and, having entered my particulars and been given my room key, I’d then gone to help myself to what was apparently a free coffee, thinking that this was an incredibly kind gesture by the owners of the hotel.

Fiction by Idle InkJan 7, 202312:22 pm

Bargain Spell by Jaime deBlanc-Knowles

In a small hamlet on the outskirts of the kingdom, there lived a boy without a voice. He could hear it inside of himself, echoing in his mind, but when he opened his mouth, all that came out were ice crystals. In his presence, people felt an awful chill and drew away. And so the boy lived in a circle of solitude, surrounded by others but always at a distance.

One day, the boy worked up the courage to go see the witch who lived on the edge of the village. He’d seen her from afar, riding her bicycle with its wide handlebars, but she never seemed to him quite what a witch should be. She wore pointy-edged glasses with green rims and favored gold earrings that brushed the tops of her shoulders.

Fiction by Idle InkJan 7, 202312:21 pm

Optic Nerves by Catherine Yeates

I used to think that the crawling sensation on my back was a symptom. It began as an occasional twinge and grew into an ache, passing from the base of my neck down to my lower back in waves. Perhaps it was some manifestation of anxiety or dread; it certainly occurred alongside those things. The unease in my gut. My clenched jaw. The tightness in my chest.

Those sensations hit me in turn as I suffered through my first Medical Neuroscience exam in graduate school. Dread overtook me when I reached the sixth question and realized I was woefully underprepared. I already had been subjected to multiple anatomy courses in undergrad, not to mention that my earlier courses as a graduate student had already covered much of basic neuroanatomy. Yet, I had not prepared for the specificity or style of questions on this exam and my skin crawled with anxiety. By the time I reached the section on brain development, my mind had gone blank. Sweat gathered on my brow as I contemplated the possibility that perhaps my own brain had failed to develop at all.