Fiction - Year V - Number 31 - December 2019

FABULOUSLY FALLENby Callista Van Allen Being the angel on someone’s shoulder is impossible when they don’t listen, no matter what you do. There isn’t even a devil on their other shoulder—no one else they’re listening...

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,...

CHICAGOby Emily Sullivan Andrea shifted the gear into park on the side of the dim lit street. She reached for the volume dial and turned it to zero. Her thumb pressed into the red release...

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...

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...

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...

THE FLAT ABOVEby Sue Brennan Belinda had always wanted to live above a shop and there was no real explaining why. Maybe it was the idea of people moving around underneath, the idea of two...

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...

FOR  EMILYby R.J. Fox “Tell Emily I love her.”Her husband’s dying words. His death bed epitaph to Amy, his wife of 25 years.On the heels of not saying a single word for over two weeks,...

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...