Fiction - Year VII - Number 51 - November 2021

OUR FATHER Our Father… It’s time to ring the church bells. I’m waiting for my turn and I’m starting to get nervous. I’ve been coming up with excuses not to climb up the tower. It’s gloomy,...

She couldn’t remember the last time she stood in the light. “Always look for the light,” he told her. “The pool of light is here, where you dance your solo.” His eyes reflected magic...

Of course, gender reassignment wasn’t available then. Not that I was unhappy with having been born male. Rather, it was the latter half of the nature-versus-nurture dichotomy that vexed me. My abnormality surfaced early. I’d ridden...

Dead Ends After Joey had been shot, time seemed to move quicker. It was an especially humid night in Long Beach. I was sitting in the parking lot of the laundromat on Park Ave. I...

It was the day of my mother's funeral. It was raining that day. The rain and wind combined and smashed along the church's windows. It sounded like a baseball bat whacking into a steel...

Screaming into the Well As jones steered his way through the palm fronds of a few ideas that wanted to surface but kept diving back down again into the undertow of his brain, appearing just...

The Business of Shells I sold seashells by the seashore. The same shore where they could be picked up for free. Except for holiday makers, though, or those with time on their hands – lonely...

How many times had I scrubbed until my fingertips were raw and blood trickled into the wash water?  Any witness to this stooped washerwoman would have seen the emotional precipice I teetered on.             First,...

Luzia’s Dowry The plane bringing me from Copenhagen to Lisbon was half-empty. So was the ‘Arrivals’ at the Lisbon-International on that late warm October evening when I came across her  ̶  my inamorata-siren  ̶  for...

You know, people really suck.  I’ll give you an example:  Here I am, just me on duty at the Come‘N Get It Eatery.  The place is just filled with all these people wanting to...