Fiction - Year V - Number 39 - August 2020

Stone Skin By Jihoon Park Kishimura, the town’s only barber, opened the window of his shop. The smell of burnt bodies and rice drafted in, along with the humid morning breeze. The last wisps of smoke...

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...

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...

    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...

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....

The Casual Thinker Many consider Samantha to be my best girlfriend since we’ve known each other for at least five years and, most weekends in Los Angeles, we are inseparable.  She is the prettiest girl...

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...

Cerebral and Contemptuous By Mike Hickman Cerebral sidled up to Contemptuous, eyed up his suit and his batwing glasses and then lifted his sherry. ‘Chin-chin, old chap,’ he said. Contemptuous raised a shaggy eyebrow. ‘And you are?’ ‘Just...

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...

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...