Fiction - Year III - Number 17 - October 2018

CHARLIE FOXTROT: GOD BLESSby Mitch Johnson Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not homeless, but these fine people don’t know a damn thing about it. I just like the lifestyle because it’s refreshing to me....

VICTORIAby Roger McKnight “Valencia isn’t Ivy League, but better,” Sylvia Glasgow remarked, then wondered if she meant it. As an alum, she loved her college, but she’d been on the road for a year recruiting...

THE CORNER, BY WALMARTby Joel Smades  Dad came out of the store only a couple minutes after he went in, and it was strange he didn’t have any plastic bags. Other people wheeled shopping carts...

THE LIGHTNING MANby Anna Schaeffer The Lightning Man came to the town of Maryanne during one of Oklahoma’s fiercest thunderstorms. He burst into Kelly’s bar soaked, wild-eyed and dying in nothing but his bright white...

THE LIGHTNING BUGby Adam McCulloch Everyone has a type. She was mine.  I could tell before we even met. I’ve always been good at summing people up. As soon as I walked into a place...

LIFE WITH THIS MANby Jody Sperling The promotion to senior management has given them more money, disposable income, but also taken him further from her and their boys: physically, he travels twice as often, and...

GRACEby Christopher Foster  Past the turn off for the cemetery and farther down the trail winding around the south side of the lake the car sat quietly in the late afternoon sun—silver, languid, chippings of...

WHY I WON’T SLEEP WITH DONALD TRUMPby Judith Roney A surprise dinner for my cousin’s Wharton graduation. Her dad wants everyone seated before he makes his entrance — says he’s her surprise. Trimmed his mullet...

THE DANCE INSTRUCTORby Dean Jollay Nervous, unsure what to expect, Nails enters the Bougainvillea Dance Studio for his first lesson. In the empty lobby, he tries to recall what brought him here, what voice said, Nails,...

GRANDMAMA’S FLOWERSby Susan Beckham Zurenda The day before Grandmama came to get me, I planned how to stow the cat in her car and take him to her house in Fairview with us. My mother...