GALAH OR GREY by Bashir Cassimally
He is a parrot, our neighbour's bird. But don't ever call him one. He becomes touchy and will reply emphatically from inside his cage that he is an African Grey. I took...
THE WELL OF THE ENLIGHTENED by João Santana Franco
The Well of the Enlightened
The four men were sitting at the table of the decadent Uighur tavern, eaten by time and dust, full of cobwebs in the ceiling,...
CLOSURE by Jonathan L. Shaffer
The elevator door opened. It was thoroughly unremarkable, as many apartment elevators would be.
A red pleather jacket over a gray hoodie entered, eyes glued to his phone. “Can...
THE BEST FUCK IN LAUREL CANYON by Alex Pugsley
She has four days left on the movie, scattered over the next twelve days, and then a three-week gap in her schedule her agent wants her to fill. But she’s exhausted. It’s...
DEAD ENDS by Jack Cimino
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 WITCH by Zachary LaFever
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...
SCREAMING INTO THE WELL by Douglas Cole
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...
THE BUSINESS OF SHELLS by Craig Dobson
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...
I LOVE YOU LIKE BROKEN GLASS by Frances Wiedenhoeft
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...
LUZIA’S DOWRY by Jozef Leyden
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...
