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.”

Flash fiction. by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:09 pm

Portalis Infernus by Bridger Cummings

Name’s Logan. I was a truck driver doing a long haul across Nebraska when the first portals opened. Seemingly random across the entire planet, fiery chasms tore rifts across the land, and demons of all sorts flooded out.

I listened to it all unfolding on the radio in my big rig. I kept thinking it must have been some War of the Worlds broadcast. Not an April Fool’s joke, but some convincing tale. But it was the same “story” on every station. I neared Omaha, and there was heavy traffic going the opposite direction I was. The horizon glowed red in the twilight. Omaha was ablaze.

Flash fiction. by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:08 pm

Land of the Free & Five-Dollar Firewood by September Woods Garland

We spent the anniversary of our son’s suicide tending a fire deep in the wild of the North Cascades, the sound of the Skagit River rushing by a constant reminder of the persistent truth of impermanence.

My husband’s boy scout training emerged in the form of confidence and a methodical approach to fire-making. We stacked logs in formation, two at a time. Poked the burning cuts of wood with a charred stick. Taming the coals and teasing out their heat.

Essay by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:07 pm

Albert Camus Would Have Loved Sharknado by Lucy Puopolo

There are seven movies in the Sharknado cinematic universe. The last movie, gloriously titled Sharknado: It’s About Time, follows the two main characters, Fin and Gil, as they warp through the inter-dimensional fabric of space and time, plagued by swarms of bloodthirsty sharks swirling around in a tunnel of doom. Sharknado: It’s About Time includes but is not at all limited to Benjamin Franklin, dinosaur mounts, Cleopatra, a Wild West showdown, and a robot wife that shoots lasers out of her eyes. Some of the cast members include write-home names like Alaska Thunderfuck, Jaason (with two a’s, not a typo) Simmons, and someone who is only ever referred to online as “Naked Cowboy. ” The films also feature Billie Ray Cyrus, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Perez Hilton, and Jerry Springer. In short, Sharknado is the single best thing to ever happen in the history of cinema.

Flash fiction. by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:06 pm

Compost by Thomas Kent West

In the summer I started a compost. It stood at the back of the lot, out past the trees and the grass on the edge of the wood. It was a good spot because it was half sun, half shade, and the smell didn’t reach the house.

In the compost I put the dead grass that dried up in the sun. I put sticks and twigs and dried leaves. I put dandelions and logs and whole fallen branches, and soon I had a great heap of dead things.

Micro fiction by Idle InkFeb 4, 202312:05 pm

A Haunted House But by Jeanine Skowronski

Put your toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, your underwear in this left-side drawer. Slip your mud-soaked boots next to my blue Birkenstocks, right here, on the welcome mat.

Ignore my bloody mother Mary in the mirrors, her old demons, swept under Aunt Christa’s ikat rug. These ghosts — they’re scary, but they’re not trying to scare you, Bubbie. They’re mostly trying to clear their throats.

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.