Fiction - Year V - Number 39 - August 2020

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...

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...

    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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....