Fiction - Year V - Number 31 - December 2019

RUNAWAYby Maria Espinosa Hannah lay on the roof.  The rough pebbles and tar scratched her body.  She watched the people below: her mother and threepolicemen.  A branch from the maple tree waved in the wind...

THE LIFE COACHby Patrick Douglas Legay People were facing out from their front porches, talking low and drinking from tall cans or plastic wine stems. The lawnmowers and leaf blowers had been quiet for hours,...

EULOGY By Spencer Storey Johnson Pine leans on his gravestone, dressed as he always was when we were young: artfully torn denim jacket, dark curls swept back teasing the glint of a gold earring. His feet...

TREASURE MAP TO SUCCESS by John Califano MY FATHER WAS meticulous about his appearance and always left for work wearing a pressed suit and a starched white shirt, his tie knotted perfectly. He carried a leather...

MADE TO DECAYby Tom O'Brien Hugh sat on a bench in Cavendish Square Park, hearing a police siren wail along nearby Oxford St. The crumbling statue of the Duke of Cumberland that shaded him looked...

DO YOU DO HITS? by James Hanna I am a magnet for strangers. They approach me in airports, subways, and bars, and they tell me their most compromising secrets. I never solicit these revelations; in fact,...

INSIDE OUTSIDE                                                                              By Geoffrey Heptonstall She had not expected it to happen.It was no use calling out to ask who was there, although it was obvious that someone was inside. An intruder was not going...

THE DAY IT ALMOST SNOWED By Richard Risemberg I think of it as the day it almost snowed. It really did snow, leaving traces for an hour or so here and there in the hills, even...

SOBER RIDERby Michael Hetherton They watched them come. Summer monoliths plodding relentlessly toward the city on the plains. The birds silent. In the pre-storm stillness sunlight lit the houses on the streets above the river...

STOOGES IN PARADISEBy Louis Gallo Once again we nestle in a luxurious oceanfront condo not one hundred yards from the beach.  In the past it was always Destin, Florida and the Gulf, but since BP’s...