Fiction - Year III - Number 12 - April 2018

ALWAYS LOVEby Brandon Abbott  The old man sat alone and watched the family from a distance. If they noticed, they didn't seem to care. Four of them picnicked in the center of the park, beneath...

TRYING AGAINby Fran Turner Marcella remembers the shotgun pointed at her face. Like the robber’s third eye, hard and filled with a dull smolder. First, the terror paralyzed her, cold air trapped in her lungs.“Don’t...

INTERVIEWby Ken Puddicombe As I ate my fried rice, I wondered if I should engage him in conversation. Or, would he think I was intruding?I tried breaking the ice. “Are you on lunch?”He wore no...

CAGEby Joshua Sastre My mother stares at me through the wire mesh, not moving, breathing evenly. Taking notes in pencil, I ask her about my childhood, her previous marriage to my father and her current...

THE BLUE HATby Linda Juliano Allison dragged fear and exhaustion behind her like a steer straining against a yoke as she followed the dirt path around one of several man-made lakes in Golden Gate Park....

TIS A PUZZLEBy Mary Ann Presman Linda got up from the kitchen table and took her cereal bowl to the sink to rinse it before putting it in the dishwasher. She glanced over at Russell,...

STRANGERS NO MOREBy Tara Lynn Marta Stacey didn’t want much out of life. Just happiness and stability. It wasn’t a lot for a young woman of seventeen to ask for. But living in a two-bedroom...

THE HOUSE ON EAST ORANGE STREETBy Toni Morgan Homer and Naomi lived in the house on East Orange Street fifty-seven years, forty of them Homer going off to work at the San Pedro docks each...

DEADLY LONELY QUIET WILDERNESSBy Lazar Trubman  A glade on the hill; on the glade – an old hut. Couple of windows, dilapidated roof, crooked porch crying for a fix. And wilderness for miles on end....

DON’T WANT MUCHby Thomas Elson This story happened over forty years ago, and reforms have eliminated its recurrence. The media would expose it. No one would tolerate it. We are in a new era of...