Fiction - Year V - Number 39 - August 2020

It was chaos in the close quarter lodgings. No matter where Mirka went people threatened one another and fought over scraps of food. Father had told him that it was where the hopeless gathered....

    Young Man’s Slave There’s a security car that passes the house every three hours. It makes a slow left hand turn about the cul-de-sac at the end of Poplar Hill Loop before retracting its path...

NUCLEAR GEOPOLITICS AND PLATO  in a Bunker thirty feet below ground,  100 years in the future By Gracjan Kraszewski Trends in Consumerism, Capitalism, and Need-Creation in the Affluent Peoples of the Euro-American West (CCCP) October 9th of Hans’ Year IV...

When Susan Met Becca Even in her kitten heels, Susan O’Leary swayed softly like the couples on the dance floor, as Etta James’s “At Last” blared from the sound system. She walked across the lawn...

Since her death six months earlier, all sanity for Graham has been compressed within the contours of challenges, bright, tightly bordered oases of purpose and achievement in a world, flat and grey and devoid...

Still Love By Jennifer A Swallow We were in the kitchen when it happened. Mitchell was sautéing some shrimp to put on a salad while I was looking through the wine fridge for the perfect bottle...

River Run Thighs burned. Cold air stung his throat. Beneath his knee caps, buried inside the knotof ligaments, muscle and bone, something clunked rhythmically with each step. Reachingdown, he clinched the joint, squeezed it a...

LOVE AND REBIRTH The bell was ringing. They heard it! It was grand! Three times it rung! Each time it rung louder than the last. Gong! Gong! Goooooong! “Another one has died!” Bibi whispered, as...

Bar the Door By Carolyn R. Russell I received the emailed query just before my nightly rounds: lock up the front door, turn off the house lights, check the thermostat, bar the rear slider door...

DEEP WATER Yellow flowered gorse flecks the hill as I climb up to Lyme Cage. As I reach the summit, the wind fair rips my hair from its roots. It’s hard to breathe when you’re...