Fiction - Year V - Number 43 - December 2020

Siren Song             Galen did not think to check the gas gauge when he made his final exit from the parking lot of the Bay View Apartments. He left Ocean View with nothing but the...

Alice in Montauk 1938, Montauk, New York The Island Club on Lake Montauk had filled up with people dining, dancing, or gambling. The air was rich with the scents of seafood and cigarette smoke, while a...

“A mirror scratched reflects no image— And this is the silence of wisdom.” - Ernest Hyde (Spoon River Anthology) The vanity arrived on Tuesday at ten, addressed to Vianna Trellis. She left it inside the entrance while...

            I sat in a chair outside the office while Mama went inside and spoke to the rabbi. I’d been sitting there since Hebrew school let out—which I attended on Tuesdays and Sundays—and when...

There was no need for words. Lyuba urged her daughter forward, indicating with a nod which way the young girl should go. Which person to approach. Not the elderly man smoking a thin cigarette...

Like Kurt Vonnegut, “I let the dog out, or I let h in, and we talk some. I let h know I like h, and he me know he likes me.” And then this was...

            The coffee cup sitting in front of him had grown cold.             His crooked mouth twitched into a grin. “How are you, Miss Sylvia?”             “Shut up,” she snapped as she approached the table. “We’re...

Osborn Gravic tugged on his muddy boots, straining to reach over his stomach to bend just enough to yank the tongues that forever curled inside his boot. He paused, catching his breath and puffing,...

The applause proved neither hesitant nor restrained in the wake of Mr. Potter’s announcement: First Prize in the 1982 Northeastern school-district photo contest was going to none other than twelve-year-old Rodric Floyd of Valleyport...

At midnight I approach the club with a somewhat vague desire to do harm to every second person in line, fortunately the bouncer waves me past all the young men with tattoos that reek...