Fiction - Year V - Number 31 - December 2019

FRIED PICKLESBy Hannah Newman Jasper did not know how to love his mother. He had been living with her for all twenty-five years of his life and each day seemed to be more unbearable than...

DO YOU DO HITS? by James Hanna I am a magnet for strangers. They approach me in airports, subways, and bars, and they tell me their most compromising secrets. I never solicit these revelations; in fact,...

BABY ON BOARDby Rachael Biggs Deliberately inhaling and exhaling the crisp morning air with force, Jane noticed one of the first leaves turning yellow and felt grateful that Autumn was not far off and that...

THE FLAT ABOVEby Sue Brennan Belinda had always wanted to live above a shop and there was no real explaining why. Maybe it was the idea of people moving around underneath, the idea of two...

TREASURE MAP TO SUCCESS by John Califano MY FATHER WAS meticulous about his appearance and always left for work wearing a pressed suit and a starched white shirt, his tie knotted perfectly. He carried a leather...

THE DAY IT ALMOST SNOWED By Richard Risemberg I think of it as the day it almost snowed. It really did snow, leaving traces for an hour or so here and there in the hills, even...

THE LIFE COACHby Patrick Douglas Legay People were facing out from their front porches, talking low and drinking from tall cans or plastic wine stems. The lawnmowers and leaf blowers had been quiet for hours,...

  IT WAS HIS HABIT TO GO TO BED EARLYby Toni Morgan Following a supper of potatoes fried in an iron skillet with two pork chops and three eggs, he carefully scraped his plate then threw...

EULOGY By Spencer Storey Johnson Pine leans on his gravestone, dressed as he always was when we were young: artfully torn denim jacket, dark curls swept back teasing the glint of a gold earring. His feet...

SOBER RIDERby Michael Hetherton They watched them come. Summer monoliths plodding relentlessly toward the city on the plains. The birds silent. In the pre-storm stillness sunlight lit the houses on the streets above the river...