Contributor: Drew Hays - - It started like the common cold. Jeremy Ashell sneezed mucoidal yellow gristle and rubbed his nose tender with brown tissues from the schools bathroom. When he got home, he coughed his way into his living room, standing up, holding a plastic electronic guitar as Aerosmith blared from the speakers. He was 9, and had no prior history of seizures, but thats what his parents thought he was having as he screamed and shook while they held him, pinned and flailing within his space, to the linoleum. In the panic, they didn't pay much mind to the slackness of his skin, or the heat he failed to give off at all. They bound his wriggling, panicky form to the bucket seat of their rheumy van and took him to St. Martys. The nurses were frightened, and two EMTs with tense forearms hoisted his kicking legs and bucking head...

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Author: Drew Hays

Contributor: E.S. Wynn - - Creak of tin as hinges bend against dust, against age. Silvered paint flakes, splinters, catches golden, attic light. Fragile crackle of faded paper, old hands trace folds, smooth them. Dear Robert, the letter reads. I hope you are doing well. I'm eight. My name is also Robert. I smile, no mention of a date, but I know when it was written. I know why, who's idea it was, how silly it seemed at the time, how necessary it became as I aged. Mrs. Patterson says that I have to write you a letter. You're fifty eight years old now. I bet you look like Grandpa Irwin. Does he still have a swimming pool you can swim in? “In heaven, maybe, if that's the way of things.” I whisper. “Grandpa Irwin died over forty years ago.” I bet you have a flying car. I wish Dad had a flying car. We could go zooming in the clouds....

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Author: E.S. Wynn

Contributor:Eric Boyd - - Enter text here. Someone had shown me a page on the internet where writers could have their stories analyzed, seeing whose work their piece was similar to. Normally, I only went on the computer to find apartment listings, harmonicas, and pornography. This writing page seemed interesting, though. The idea of a computer telling someone who they were like, sounded like, wrote like, was funny. It was funny in a sad way, because it was probably true. Everyone sounds like everyone, now; nobody is nobody anymore. Who would I be like? Who was I? Who was Fredrick Anderson? I looked over a few older stories, and none of them seemed good enough. I wanted my best work to be analyzed! If I put some piece of shit I wrote while I was half-drunk… No. That wouldn’t be right. Maybe It would say I sounded like Kerouac? Hemingway...

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Author: Eric Boyd