Fiction

THE MIRACLE OF ESTELLEby Joram Piatigorsky For the third time in a row Benjamin didn’t have a single matching pair in the cards he held in his hands. His frustration doubled when Estelle flashed her...

THE BLOSSOM-WATCHERSBy David Vardeman Mr. King’s son married Mr. Feinmann’s daughter.  “We should get married too,” Mr. Feinmann said to Mr. King.“Do you mean to each other?”“I was thinking more of ladies.”“Oh, of course,” Mr....

CREATIVE DESTRUCTIONBy Mark Halpern … is the essential fact … Joseph Schumpeter, economist The 1980s were all boom, boom, boom. Even at the foreign companies, time raced along its money-greased track. And their guys on the scene—those...

BANGKA ISLAND STORYby Michael Paul Hogan for Toti O’Brien There were nine bottles of Bintang beer on the shelf behind the counter of Abdu Rama’s beachfront banana shack. On the counter itself there was a watermelon, sliced,...

LOVE(D)by Sasha Chinnaya Night. A stack of blank pages intimidates me. A few empty containers once filled with coffee form a wall on my temporary desk. My mind searches for answers wrapped in a pretty...

A RARE THINGby Matthew Chacko When Joel opened with, “Oh my god, do I have the craziest thing to tell you,” Ellie expected to hear of his roommates’ latest transgression, a topic they frequented on...

VICKI LOUISEby Margaret Rowan Cresting the dune, I looked out across the sand to the Atlantic, its foaming edge outlining the rocky shore of Phillips Beach. Aside from a few scavenging seagulls, I had the...

Izabela’s earliest memory is of picking fruit from the fig tree that bordered the stream which ran along the bottom of her garden. She was probably four or five years old; it was before...

Dog By Sarah Jane Justice The outer suburbs wear a constant dressing of lawn maintenance sounds. Any day not marked by the rare appearance of rain holds the background noise of a lightly whirring motor, blending...