Category: Fiction

Fiction by Dec 2, 202312:00 pm

Head Above Clouds by J.T. Ruiter

“I saw polar bears tumbling into a cloud-filled crater,” I told him. “As if going into the clouds of heaven–but down, instead of up.

“I had this feeling in my dream that my friends were worried,” I went on. “But me? I don’t know what I felt. Elation, maybe. Excitement. Kinship. The clouds were so dense, white-tailed deer galloped on them. There were rabbits, too. All manner of animals–anything but human–making their pilgrimage to it: a wide, lonely crater.”

“Yea, uh-huh,” he said. “That’s a weird dream, Perry.”

Fiction by Dec 2, 202311:58 am

Foul Mountain by Olga Dauer

Paul Stanton disappeared on a hot Thursday afternoon in July, quietly and without trouble. His executive assistant assumed he was out to lunch, taking down messages from three clients and directing one partner to call back later. But later came, and all that remained of Paul was his striped blue suit jacket, dutifully hugging the back of his tufted leather chair.

The letter arrived three weeks later. When Paul’s wife Jane saw the address on the envelope, she told herself that in order to stay on her feet for as long as she needed to, she had to come up with a plan. First, Jane decided that she’d get in touch with Officer Kinsley at the police station. She thought about how she’d say it – does one request to cancel a missing person report? Rescind it? Or would the mere mention of the letter arriving from Foul Mountain be enough? After that, she’d call her sister. Formulating these next steps in her head helped Jane momentarily delay the gravity of the news she held in her shaking hands, giving her just enough time to walk from the mailbox to the porch, find her keys, and close the door behind her as she slid down to the floor.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:45 am

The Presage by Ken Foxe

I never tell anybody about my gift. Nobody really wants to know when they are going to die. I remember when I first happened upon it, not something I’m ever likely to forget. I was thirteen years old, a gawky schoolboy with all that entails, rebellious, playing at being a man, ready to fight with anybody, most especially my parents. I was at Heuston Station, about to catch a train to what seemed at the time like escape, three weeks of freedom in an Irish-language school in West Cork.

As I was about to board, my mother insisted on hugging me and in that moment, I could see it all vividly. The white rental car that my father was driving, the pilgrim coast road, the metal of the crash barrier giving way, a tumbling, and the wreck on the rocks below. Mammy watched my dad die, wondering if she might survive, but she didn’t.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:44 am

Father’s Acrylic Gunshot by Jazeen Hollings

My father’s finger nail bed, picked raw from worry, would’ve hugged the trigger of the gun. After hesitating, maybe not, the finger would’ve curled shut. The gun would’ve erupted, its bullet would’ve split his temple. No matter how long he had planned to end his life, even he couldn’t have escaped the surprise of death, which would have eventually trickled away, the deep crease of his brown unfurling, finally soft.

It had probably been a moan not a shot. A tired exhale.

This is what I thought of, in the middle of the quiet and dark hospital room, as I cradled my newborn son.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:42 am

Alter by Will Pinhey

I make myself sick three times today before running into her this evening.

The first is in the morning. Standing in front of my mirror, paralysed with indecision over what to wear. I feel this cloying need for comfort, I want to bury my body under thick layers of fabric but my jumpers are worn and old, everything tired and used up and repeated and stale. I stick three fingers down my throat and heave my morning coffee into the toilet. My day begins badly. I brush my teeth again.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:41 am

Sunflowers by Sevde Kaldiroglu

I decided not to publish the book I wrote about him. I know you want me to, Eymen, but he wouldn’t forgive me for it. Not when he’s trying so hard to get better, to be better. Not when he’s cooking me eggs with the sunny side up, the yolk just the perfect consistency of a semi-ripe apricot.

He’s approaching me now, his circular, friendly belly leading the way. He’s cut up pears for us. I don’t like pears, but I take a slice anyway. I smile. “Fresh from the trees?” I ask.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:39 am

Magic in the Digital Age by Patricia Ann Bowen

As I watch children scurry by my iron gate, I recall how I started doing the same thing when I was their age, nine, maybe ten, hurrying past this same house, pumped full of Halloween sugar, ready to jump out of my skin at any unexpected sight or sound.

At thirteen I summoned up the courage to open the creaking gate – rusty even back then – and knocked on the door, my pals cowering in the shadows. Their loss. The old crone who drew it open seemed pleased to see a brave young fellow coming to call. She put out her hand and, before I could grasp it, a dove fluttered from her gnarled palm. I stumbled backward as the bird flew up the stairwell, then perched on the banister.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:38 am

Misfits by Hilary Ayshford

The club only ever had two members: Eric and me. There were plenty of other weirdos at school – techno-geeks, nerds, gamers, Goths, those who went geocaching in the woods at weekends or played the glockenspiel in the school orchestra. There were even a couple of stamp collectors and a lone plane spotter. But we agreed that although they were all outcasts in their own way, they weren’t in our league.

Eric and I started partnering up in lessons, mainly because nobody else wanted to work with us.

‘We misfits have to stick together,’ Eric said.

Fiction by Aug 5, 202311:03 am

Bottled Up by Yolanda DeLoach

“I can’t take this heat anymore,” I said, pushing back strands of hair that blew free from my headband. The open car windows did little to bring relief from Louisiana’s thick, oppressing air. “Might as well be holding a hair dryer up against my face,” I added for dramatic effect.

“For someone who grew up here, you sure complain a lot about the heat,” Daniel said. He poked me in the thigh.

“Well, we had this thing called air conditioning and it actually worked,” I said, returning a double jab to his thigh.