Tag: Dark

Fiction by May 6, 20239:28 am

Takeda by Christopher A. Walker

From the plane window, Tokyo yawns gray and endless. At this altitude, it all seems still, like a diorama. Despite the serenity of this quiet scene, I can’t shake this twinge of panic that haunts me every time I get on a plane.

It’s been some time since I was last in Japan. One day I’d like to visit without any interviews, no all-nighters spent hammering out a first draft, counting the difference between JST and PST on my fingers like a nervous tic. Among Tokyo’s millions, I hope to find one man. A man who doesn’t know I exist, but whose work and the questions it leaves unanswered have shaped the course of my life indelibly. I need to ask him how he made something that shouldn’t be possible.

The only problem is that Yusei Takeda disappeared twenty-three years ago.

Poetry by May 6, 20239:26 am

It Makes Me Think of You by Jamie Kim

I do not remember how it feels to be twelve,
but most of the time it’s all I can think about.
Sometimes I think you’ll rise up from the grave,
Sometimes I can not believe that you’re dead,

I have always found desperation beautiful,
And maybe this is all a baptism,
But I wish they’d have told me it hurts so damn bad.

Flash fiction. by May 6, 20239:23 am

House Sitters by Kathy Lanzarotti

I wonder if it’s snowing at home.

It was a random thought, born out of schadenfreude as much as curiosity. The white stuff had been falling steadily when they left and Lyssa had taken much joy in the fact that she wouldn’t have to shovel for a week.

Fiction by Apr 1, 202312:16 pm

A Shred of Decency by Kate Bergquist

In between wracking coughs and long, thirsty swigs of Jim Beam, Bessie takes a good hard look at Burt’s face. “That storm. It’s brewing again. In your eyes,” she says, craning her neck to study his mixture of dark blue twisted with gray and green; changeable eyes that reflect his mood. Somber, with a pinch of angry.

“You can’t hide it from me.”

Fiction by Mar 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 Feb 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 Feb 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.

Flash fiction. by Feb 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 Feb 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.