Tag: Slice of life

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Witches, Inc. by Monica Sharp

Early lunch now. The café is packed with students and workers sitting on chairs and chatting across tables. People just finishing a morning in the office or in the classroom. The roar inside is like a seashore, rising and falling, laughter, a hissing Marzocco machine, tinkling spoons and cups, white plates streaming out of the kitchen.

I order the carnitas with watermelon radish, and why not, a glass of prosecco with lunch. Sunlight glints off the river. Pedestrians shiver outside, leaning against lamp posts coated in rust. The wait is long here. It always is. The place is too popular.

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God Will Be In Today by Olivia Payne

‘So no meat, including meat soup, no spreads–’

‘Not even jam?’

‘No, not even jam I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t we buy in the jam?’

‘Well–’

‘If I can just jump in there, Val? As we were discussing in the supervisor meeting last week, the cost of buying in jam is just too much for our budget at the moment. Jam is technically one of our luxury items that we don’t promise to people, it’s just nice to have.’

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Counting Smiles by Tim Frank

A fleeting smile, whether from an arthritic octogenarian stumbling off a bus, or from a neighbour glancing at you over a picket fence as you dig for weeds, can really raise your spirits.


They’re not always easy to come by, however, and there was a time when I was perpetually surrounded by weary faces and paranoid scowls. I worked as a bin man alongside monosyllabic migrants, living in a squat full of stoners ensconced in their own gloomy dream worlds. I felt close to ending it all.

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The Next Scene by Deborah Shrimplin

When Kaye noticed her brain was struggling to remember the most basic nouns (she was told this happens to most seniors) she decided to take up writing. Writing was supposed to be good for her senior brain.

Last night, Kaye had written the first few scenes of a story she thought had wonderful potential. This morning she is sitting at her computer rereading it. She questions, “What would happen next?”

Born in Fire

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White Paint by Zary Fekete

Nick bought paint, white paint. Enough white paint, he thought. He also bought all of the brushes and rollers that the man suggested should go with it. The man knew plenty about painting houses. Done plenty of painting, myself. What you need is probably 5 gallons. Now, do you need brushes?…

Nick started with the back room…with the closet in the back room. It was a basement apartment. It was once part of the main house upstairs, but the kindly upstairs couple had turned it into a basement apartment for people who needed a place to get back on their feet. They had sealed off the upstairs at the top of the old stairs but kept the stairs themselves, in case they should ever want to open the place back up again. As it was, the stairs now just went up and ended against the wooden boards which sealed off the upstairs from the down. The stairs were there, but went nowhere.

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The Metrics of a Day by Alice Wilson

Today I walked six thousand and thirty-nine (6,039) steps which I appraised as ‘acceptable’.

I consumed five hundred and thirty-one (531) calories for breakfast in the eating of one bagel (254) with cream cheese (100) and smoked salmon (177).

I shed twelve (12) tears whilst crying on the phone to my dad about the fundamental question: “Am I willing to be hurt in the same way by this person again?”, which I resented but had to concede was #growth.

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Middle Distance by D.B. Miller

My neighbor had a baby once. That much, I got. Just like I got the cup of coffee more or less how I wanted it. Last week, at a different café, I ordered iced coffee but was served black coffee with a sinking scoop of ice cream on top. The waitress smirked at my accent, too, which made me want to flip over her tray.

My neighbor describes the circumstances leading up to the moment she could no longer say she had a baby. It happened a while ago. I’m not sure about the rest because my class just finished Unit 8 and, judging from the syllable count, her words are sophisticated and come from Unit 20, possibly even Unit 35.  

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