Fiction - Year V - Number 39 - August 2020

In Rotation Aria caught the city bus as the sky donned a pinkish glow before the day’s final gasp. Her daughter Millie sat on her lap, gripping her wrinkled hospital scrubs — the ones with...

A Happier Ending by Richard Thieme "I hate 'Fargo!'" Marcella said. "Don't tell me you like that goddamn movie." I looked at her angry face and said, "Well, I didn't say--" "You said you thought it...

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...

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...

Ella by T. M. Boughnou “What?” the man heard the mother demand sharply and emphatically of her young daughter. “Tell me—where did you get that from? Who told you that?” She...

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...

Science Project Journal Results of a Giant Sequoia Gene Spliced to a Lima Bean Plant Introduction Mr. Johannsen, our science teacher, told us if we wanted to earn an A+ this year we needed an...

Pleasantness by Pete Able I took my wife out on the town. It was the same old town but a new restaurant we hadn’t been to before. An experience that I hoped would slightly expand our...

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...

Intimate “I wanted to intimate something and not to be intimate,” I explained with a bitter grin. He always boasted about his excellent command of English but that sex-charged adjective that resembled a verb he had...