On the train ride home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened that day at work with my boss. Since she’s the director of our organization, I rarely have reason to interact with her at all. That’s my supervisor’s job, so being summoned to her office felt like a big deal. And it was, I quickly discovered. She chewed me out, all over nothing, really. A perceived slight she took personally. I thought she was going to fire me on the spot.
Category: Fiction
Keeping Up With The Joanses by Margaret Cahill
You look like a Joan. That’s what Ciara’s flatmate Fidelma said to me one Friday night in The Round House. We’d gone out for drinks after work and Ciara had texted her to invite her along. Ciara’d gone up to get the first round in when she said it.
“Sorry, what did you say your name was again?” Fidelma asked, even though Ciara had only just introduced us.
“Joan,” I replied.
The Unfortunate Kidnapping of the Accidental Imposter of the Artist by Paul Kimm
I didn’t move to Malta for The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, but it factored in when I decided to make the move. I’m talking about the painting of course, not the actual decapitation of the man. Valetta didn’t even exist when they were lopping off John’s noggin and the severing of said head happened in what’s now Jordan I believe. I don’t care about all that stuff, the history, the faith, that can all sod off. It’s Caravaggio’s colours, light, sense of space, the still action in the painting. The beauty and the violence. The messages. The blood. The signing in John the Baptist’s blood right there, on the huge, five metre canvas, that’s what gets me. Every time I’ve been to the cathedral, and paid the extortionate 12 euros entrance fee, it has got me.
Lost in Transition by Leslie Wolfe
Francine usually avoided baggage claim, especially after an international flight arrived. The palpable, cranky energy that rolled off the living as they watched other people’s luggage bump down the ramp was enough to put her on edge for days. She ignored the red flags her brain flung out and held her ground, waiting. Again.
Hours passed. When even the security guards were dozing in their uncomfortable chairs, the baggage conveyor belt’s fogged plastic flaps parted to admit an abandoned duffel. An ethereal shape draped itself over it, quickly apparent as a diaphanous, boy-sized human that leaped off the carousel and ran to Francine. “You’re back!”
Visceral by Maheen Majid
I’m leaking again, and it’s just as annoying as the last fucking time. Harvey had to tell me there was blood on my shirt because I didn’t even notice at first. So now I’m standing in the bathroom rewrapping my bandages while he waits outside as usual.
He offered to help, of course, but I don’t need help. As frustrating as it is, I usually like this being my own little ritual where I can just dissemble and breathe freely. It’s less enjoyable when I’ve ruined another shirt and I’m getting fluids all over the sink.
Line Reading by Tyler Corbridge
Shane picks his mysteries by their covers. Trench coats, fedoras, shadowy back alleys, that sort of thing. One Sunday afternoon, at a restaurant called Chester’s, Shane was caught up in a mystery involving a stolen antique spoon when a dark-haired young lady leaned across her table to say, “Any guesses?”
Shane blank-faced her over top of his paperback.
“Who stole the spoon?” she said. Her voice was low, syrupy, and her smile said she was about to give away the answer.
The Faith Organ by Anuja Mitra
They corner me a quarter of the way into my evening walk. I’ve been tracing this route since the first week of lockdown; now, in week five, my soles can pull me through it in my sleep. These habits are innocuous enough in isolation. And yet I can’t contain that air of doom, the anxiety throbbing underneath it all. I see myself shuffling through my neighborhood like those fleeing pixels that become Pacman’s lunch, gliding down the same old tunnels to no escape.
I’m entering one such tunnel, a sort of wooded path forking off a driveway, when I hear a hello at my heels. I turn, squinting in the glare of early sunset. It’s three women: an older woman and two young women. A mother and daughters, teacher and students? Leader and disciples? They approach, this strange trinity, asking if they can give me a “presentation” on the Passover. Lucky for them I say yes because I’m a poor practitioner of saying no. (Do I emit a heathen look? Hare Krishnas like to stop me on the street.)
It’s a dad’s life by Jeremy Hinchliff
‘Mind you get that bike home in one piece.’
His mother left him at the school bike sheds. The car faded towards Ipsden Heath, leaving him to cycle home the long route.
The long route would have been all right in the end. But on this fateful day Tom Purton decided to make the descent of Berins Hill, the forbidden shortcut. Thirty seconds down the incline he heard a little tinkling behind him. His rear brake was falling off. Away went the endless sequence of nuts and washers accompanying the brake pads, into the abyss. The bike picked up speed.
Burying the Dead by Abigail Seltzer
There was some confusion about where Carole should sit. She had ordered five low mourners’ chairs, but the rabbi (who had stayed far too long as it was) explained yet again that Jewish law did not permit ex-wives to sit on mourner’s chairs, even if they had been married to the deceased for nearly thirty years. She could, if she wanted, sit near her ex-brother-in-law and her daughters, but not next to them. She was only there as a comforter of mourners, not as a mourner. As he put on his high black hat to leave, he reminded her to cover her mirrors, as was required for a house of mourning.
‘All the mirrors,’ he added, with the air of a man who knew a rule-breaker when he saw one.
Idle Ink 