Fiction - Year II - Number 7 - Volume I - June 2017

SANCTUARYBy Heide Arbitter They took the birds away.  That was the last hint.  They were unattractive birds, loud and sad looking, with feathers plucked bloody and wings hanging helplessly. But, these birds were his joy,...

OBITBy Marc Simon I never read the obituaries, but last Thursday was an exception.   For some reason, they were mixed in at the end of the sports section.  I scanned them with morbid curiosity, and...

THE COMEBACKSBy Monique Gagnon German By the time she’s 10, Cami knows the main trails in and out of Grampy’s woods pretty well, even though they span more than a hundred acres. The main trail...

WAITING FOR JACKBy Melanie Simms  I used to be romance novel junkie.  Love was all I lived for. I lived off Harlequin romancebooks and believed that love was forever.Prince Charming was more than just a...

SUPERMARKET PAPERBACKBy Mike Dorman            Fifty miles west of Bloomington lies Hillsboro, a monument to middle-class malaise.  A fifteen-mile break from the real world, a stucco strip mall oasis in the vast Midwest horizon.  The...

HE STOPPEDBy Harlan Yarbrough In the four years I spent tracking Brian Jacobsen, my opinion regarding his whereabouts reversed itself several times.  Although I didn’t know him personally, several of my friends and acquaintances did—that’s...

THE ROME CLUBBy Leah Sackett There were six of them, each there for the same reason: Big Mike, Vince, Joe, Tommy, Sal, and Frank. The Rome Club was an old country tradition. They had buried...

HOW THE FIRE STARTEDBy Melissa DosSantos Sullivan  Marian kept the pills in an old sugar bowl on the top of the refrigerator her mother had bought new in 1948. Her arthritic hand cramped as she...

THE DESERT SWALLOWS THE RIVERBy Krista Diamond   The waitress at the empty diner in Sanderson had fake nails on her fingers and a gun on her hip. I sat alone and ate a hamburger and...

SACRED GEOMETRY FOR ARIEL VBy Alex R. Encomienda Sometimes life told stories in strange cases and the complexity of its subject was overlooked despite the story having a solid underlying meaning. It was no wonder...