Contributor: Joyce Chong - - “Slide Brothers Circus Presents: The Great Landon Winnsfield at Blue Valley Falls” Dmitri Petrovsky adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses as he peeked out from behind the curtain and examined the large banner strung across the fairground entrance. A whispering crowd of onlookers stood before the outdoor stage, clapping as the animal trainers made their exit. Dmitri ducked backstage where Sandra was rushing to and fro, tools in hand. A mechanical vest sat on the table, the secret behind most of Landon's stage performances. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy bun that jostled each time she shifted her head, Dmitri smiled at the sight of his wife hard at work. She called her husband over, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Can you tell me where the spring is? I need it for the confetti finale.” “Bottom...

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Author: Joyce Chong

Contributor: Lauren Hoyt - - I see the world through men’s faces. Men with religious beards and carefully acquired wrinkles. I see women and I don’t. Every woman has my mother’s face, my wife’s face, my daughter’s face. Only the eyes change. Black, almond, brown, round, squinted, sometimes painted up like a cheap whore. Masha’Allah, the eyes. I walk through the streets of Dammam and see women paces behind their husbands. Their eyes are hidden behind their niqab. The men nod to me, Salam, muttawa. I sift through my prayer beads, reciting the Qu’ran. I hear the Salah ring through the streets, and I go to a mosque. We wash our hands and feet in unison, speak in unison, pray in unison, bow to Mecca in unison, in a sea of black eyes. Praise be to Allah. We try to be the same in our piety, a world of uniformity. I do not want this for my...

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Author: Lauren Hoyt

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer - - Jeremy tried to hatch eggs by sitting on them and keeping them warm. It’s not funny. He did a lot of things like that- he was just an odd kid. Ok, Jeremy was a weirdo. He invented a time machine which really meant he would lock his “friends” in the closet and flick the lights on and off, then when they got out he would hand them a faded rock from the driveway claiming it came from prehistoric times and show them a black and white postcard of the Queen Mary trying to pass it off as a picture he took of the Titanic in 1912. I don’t know if the Titanic was sunk or not by then, but regardless that was always the year he claimed- 1912. Jeremy often pretended he was a dog. He would lay on all fours mimicking a dog’s position while he lapped water from a bowl and scratched invisible fleas. At night he...

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: Regina McMenamin Lloyd - - There was a sound. It was ear piercingly loud. My chest was ripped open. It felt like the warming sting of heartburn, like the time as a girl I swallowed a whole blue mint and waited gasping for the sugars to melt. It was reminiscent of the panic attack I had on a roller coaster when I was a teen, it felt like the first time Pete Gorman, my first boyfriend, made my toes curl between the rumpled sheets of my first dorm room cot. People say at death’s door your life will flash through their eyes. For me it was my brain remembering the feelings of this throbbing anguish and trying to identify the source. I felt myself float out of my body. Before that moment, I had felt the body that housed me was me. But I knew all of me was still here in this purple plasma jelly. I tried to force...

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Author: Regina McMenamin Lloyd

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer - - “I heard it was murder.” “It wasn’t murder, it was an altercation. Self-defense if anything.” “Wait, what happened exactly?” “Well, the Daniel guy was trying to get out of drugs, trouble- you know what I mean. Trying to get his life back together. He never really was the same after his sister passed away.” “Yeah, I heard about that! That was so shocking and sad.” “Yeah it really was. So, he had this party and a few of the guys showed up with stuff. They were trying to shoot up in his bathroom or something, and he didn’t want them to. One guy got really upset- said he was “disrespecting” them or something, can you believe that? Just because he didn’t want them doing drugs in his bathroom? So the fight between them just got bigger and bigger.” “Wow- well, what did the rest of the people at...

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: George Sparling - - Smoking black hashish with Mary as we sit on a foam mattress upon plywood held up with cement blocks in a one-room shack at the edge of a hacienda, bathroom in an adjacent white concrete building. I saved money from my American job and then quit. I fled bosses, alcoholic DTs, a woman who may or may not have told cops I raped her, collection agencies, jail time for two bad checks, my infant son taken away by my ex-wife, hiding from loan sharks I owed money. 1968: the army massacred students in the Tlateloco housing project in Mexico City. Mary and I know some of the students but not what happened to them. Who knows the fate of our bones or how many times we’ll be buried. Shit, I was high. Mary stares at my reflection in the window, hashish made from female flowers of cannabis plants, females...

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Author: George Sparling

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer - - Gray sky, cars honking, and a homeless man sitting against a doorway with a brown-bagged wine bottle behind him - another day in the city. He was almost your typical homeless man, with a withered face and ratty gray dreadlocks, his black skin creased by the sharp chilly fall weather of at least a decade. Now it was hot and sticky in the midsummer heat. He had an unusually cheery demeanor though, talking to all who surrounded him and not asking for anything though a hat with money sat in front of him. His left pant leg was torn, faded, and rolled up to the upper thigh revealing his prosthetic. People passed- a lady with a chic leather trench coat, a man carrying a bouquet of flowers, several youth covered in headphones or talking on cell phones. And then there was a twelve year old boy passing through...

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: Jim Harrington - - I crouched behind a lilac bush and watched the horse gallop down the street and stop in front of my place. I hadn't received any mail for three days and wondered what was going on. I thought maybe kids were pranking me. The rider wore a Stetson, chaps, and cowboy boots with silver inlays in the toes. His back was hunched, and he must have weighed 125 pounds stepping out of the tub. He rode a black stallion big enough to win a game of chicken with a bulldozer. His pants were AWOL. "Hey, pardner," I said, as he reached down and opened my mailbox. "What the hell ya think you're doin'?" I didn't normally talk like this, and even odder I felt like spitting into a bucket. He snatched my mail out of the box, rifled through it, and spurred the horse on to Fred's. I sauntered over--I'd never sauntered before...

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Author: Jim Harrington

Contributor: Marissa Halvorson - - Whimpers pierced the cold, dank air of the dark room. In the shadows cast by the dim light filtering through the bars, stood a woman. Dark hair tumbled down her shoulders in voluminous curls. A hood, attached to a black cloak, hid her face. She faced the room, where a man lay on his cot, whimpers caught in his damaged throat. “Franklin Jae Lynford,” she called. Her voice rang out in the emptiness like bells echoing off the dark walls. Her rich voice held no trace of emotion. The whimpers came to an abrupt halt, and the man uncurled himself and looked around. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face and soaked his shirt through. Bright with fever, his eyes darted from side to side. The woman stepped into the dim light. A grimace twisted the man’s features as illness once again overtook him and he pushed...

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Author: Marissa Halvorson

Contributor: Elyk S. Von Ire - - Jon’s drunk again. Swaying at the table. Willing his eyes to stay open. Hebrew swirls in the air around us with the smoke. Jon stares forward. His eyelids are anchors that tow his head down with them. He snaps it back up and looks around. Again, he stares. He nods. The three Israelis are either too stoned or too wrapped up in their own conversation to notice Jon’s slumping head or closing eyes. But I’d never be able to tell for sure. I don't speak Hebrew either. Maybe they are discussing it ad nauseum. Jon nods. His eyes closed. When he opens them, slowly, he looks at me. His eyes are glistening. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t. His eyes rest on the bottle of rum, it's triumphant last inch still at the bottom. He grabs the bottle and turns the label towards him. I assume he is staring, not reading....

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Author: Elyk S. Von Ire

Contributor: Peter Baltensperger - - Black clouds hung from the night sky, forbidding tapestry traveling slowly through the darkness, obscuring a sickle moon that should have been floating somewhere. Sharp flashes of sheet lightning carved the horizon into ominous layers, electric javelins for the brooding night. The wolf man from the carnival in the fairgrounds sat at the edge of a forgotten pond in an ancient park, waiting for a rain that wouldn’t come, trying to dispel anxieties, nightmares. The clouds refused to yield. Somewhere an empty train charged into a black tunnel, the engineer mesmerized by the meaningless presence of a minuscule light somewhere at a distant end. The wolf man cringed with his own troubled visions of incomprehensible endings, unfulfilled promises, scratching his mind for solutions, relief. He hadn’t come...

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Author: Peter Baltensperger

Contributor: Samantha Memi - - I got the call at four in the morning. “Steve, get up! We’ve got a job.” That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Some kid had got himself drowned in the river. Jed was on his way to the station. I’d have to meet him there. As sleep drifted away my first thought was Mary; I saw her running down the street towards me, felt her arms around me, her warm breath on my neck as she whispered “Who’s the most beautiful woman you know?” Getting out of bed was the hardest part. My breath stung the air into cloudy reactions. Two hours before sunup the earth held the cold. What if some crazy kid was floating down the river? Hurrying now wouldn’t help him. I needed to fix the heating. I had forgotten to buy coffee. I couldn’t function till at least two coffees. I found a pack of ready ground in the back of the cupboard....

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Author: Samantha Memi

Contributor: Miles Gough - - I just got back from the hospital and I’m too wired on pain killers to not want to go on about it. Don’t worry about me and the hospital, it was just five stitches on my forehead, not even a wound if you ask me. Toast Club got out of hand last night, but that is the kind of thing that happens at Toast Club. I heard that the guy from The Castle Cafe will have to wear an eye patch for a while, now that’s a wound. Maybe I should wear an eye patch, cause that shit’s cool. Toast Club is the best after hours underground competition we cooks have done, and now, who knows if it will ever happen again. The idea is simplicity, which is usually not my thing, but this is extreme simplicity, so I’m with it. Everyone always says that great chefs are better than anyone else, no matter what the hell they’re cooking. Some...

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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: Jon Wesick - - “Your death is the only thing you own,” the old woman began. She was fat, so fat she took up the whole couch. Layers of flab coated her arms so they were as thick as a normal person’s legs. The blue skirt she wore was big enough to shelter a whole troop of Boy Scouts from the rain and her white blouse was stained from greasy fingers. The house stank of rotten food no doubt from the bones of several chicken roasts on the table. She would have eaten the whole world if only she could have found a way to make it hold still. Neither I nor the others sitting on the dirty carpet in front of her wanted to be there, not Joe nor Dave nor Ray nor Lisa. We had only one thing in common. We were fifteen years old, the age our elders told us we had to complete this rite of passage. Technically no one has to undertake...

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Author: Jon Wesick

Contributor: Malika Manai - - "They think me a dancer of sorts. My movement through time and space inspired them to new beliefs. I awake, after a short century-timed period of rest. I lounge as I acknowledge the new reality and review my territory. The changes they made will not detract me from performing. Keep moving my feet on the black wooden boards; keep my poise straight and my head high. The short days I live lazily and the long starry nights I adore. To me the elegance of the night belongs; to me, the dark shadows and their poetry. My back aches from the sudden movements I need to make to test my equilibrium. I remember how sometimes I start to feel lead-heavy by the end of the performance and the rest I need to take prolongs under the hours of the sun. But I can never give it up. The night smells of fear as I prepare my dance. My...

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Author: Malika Manai

Contributor: Jackie Macintosh - - “This’ll do, there’s no-none about. Slow down but don’t bother stopping. Serves the little bugger right” The shabby, rusty old Ford pulled into the lay-by, the rear nearside door swung open, and a brown object was hastily tossed into the hedgerow. The car gathered speed as the door was slammed shut from the inside, and it sped off into the night. A small brown dog, ragged and unkempt with feet two sizes too big for his body, leapt to his feet and started to race after the car. He ran, barking, for a couple of miles before realising that there was no further scent trail or sound to follow. He slowed to a trot, his feet sore from the tarmac and the unaccustomed exercise. His stomach groaned even more than usual. He lapped eagerly from a roadside puddle and stood, whimpering and scared. He heard the...

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Author: Jackie Macintosh

Contributor: Hollis Whitlock - - An old man is sitting next to a fire, with a cup of steaming tea, staring into the blue eyes of a young woman. Her gaze entrances him in streaming tears for an hour, reminiscing on romantic strolls, warm nights and lustful passion, but winter's chill is whistling in gusts of crystallized white and blackening the smoldering red embers into wafting clouds of gray smoke. Even the tea has cooled to a distasteful bitterness. He treks along a path, across a field, through knee deep snow toward a pile of wood stacked next to a fence. Exhaling vapor fogs through frosty swirls of blinding white in the darkening dusk of grayness. Memory guides to the entrance of a vacant stable where cavalry once flourished. The haunting war ingrained in the subconscious, shifts subtly between dimensions in an overlapping transformation...

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Author: Hollis Whitlock

Contributor: Jacob Christensen - - The ominous jingle of the bell hanging off of the ramen-vendor door was the last sound Kyo was able to catch. There was a violent downpour swallowing up Tokyo for the past week and a half. Inches of rain began to pile up on the nightly weather forecasts during the news. It was the kind of perpetual rain that seemed to defy logic and challenged nature itself. Some would even say it was a storm that only gods could conjure up. To Kyo, however, this storm was a sight for his sore eyes. Kyo was always fond of the rain, even as a child. He would casually arouse himself from his bed to rub his stiff eyelids and throw his legs over the side of his bed where his toes would fall just short of touching the hard, cold wood flooring. The first sense that would come to him would be the sound coming from outside...

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Author: Jacob Christensen

Contributor: E.S. Wynn - - These caves go on forever. Be seated among the brethren, the memory of an absent light breathes, speaks in eldritch whispers which presuppose that God is not dead. Be seated. We are at rest. I avoid the caverns that scream, the caverns that lurk, the caverns that step through the darkness, hunting, waiting just beyond reach, waiting like sharks until a stumble, a blind groping. When they come, they come with teeth. They come to swallow. I flirt with the death therein, touch it, dance away. I walk the dusty caverns. I pick the depths that open without footsteps, that offer unpolished stone and a gathering of shadows. On and on, these caverns roam, deeper and deeper, dropping into vistas, cities unlike anything on the surface, the sunlit structures that crumble with the slightest glance, prodding touch....

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Author: E.S. Wynn

Contributor: Okey Fitz - - “I am a down to Earth girl. I know that money doesn’t grow on trees and that in order to have something in your life you need to work hard to get it. I know that you get a job and then get fired from it after twenty years of dedicating work. I know that people meet, fall in love, fall out of love and then meet someone else and everything starts all over again. I know that marriages fall apart and Happily Ever After is for five year olds. I know that people are born, grow, get old and die. They also poop, fart, burp and masturbate. No one is perfect. A lot of them try to be but fail. Because we are weak and we always have someone else to blame. We see sins of others but never notice our own. We go to Church and pray every day, calling ourselves Christians but then limit our children and judge everyone else...

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Author: Okey Fitz

Contributor: Alina Yudkevich - - “Huh. How ‘bout that,” he said, turning off the weather report. “Grandma dies, and a month later we get Tropical Storm Josephine.” “That crazy bat would share a name with a natural disaster,” his fiancée said, quickly adding, “Sorry. She hated me.” A week later, the storm raged on. On the day of their wedding, its status was upgraded to hurricane. The garden arch blew over and fell neatly around the minister, whose shriek wasn’t heard over the roaring wind. The guests swarmed the gazebos when the torrential downpour started. Weighed down by her waterlogged gown, the bride plodded slowly behind, sniffling. The hanging church signs flapped violently, hurling letters and wooden debris in all directions. A bronze P knocked the bouquet clean out the bride’s hands, and what remained of HOPE sideswiped...

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Author: Alina Yudkevich

Contributor: John Laneri - - Hours after the fire, people continued to wander the ruins – their thoughts lost in the swirling wisps of smoke drifting from blackened rubble and scattered debris. They were in Neverton, a small community along the cattle trail to Fort Worth and each of them knew that life was about to change in their town. In the saloon, Vernon Carter's eyebrows lifted heavily. “As mayor, I’m tellin’ you gents we have a serious problem confronting us. We need to get our brains together and think out a solution.” He paused a moment, his eyes moving from face to face, studying the other two men on the town council. “In fact,” he continued, his voice barely above a whisper, “Our town will dry up to nothing unless we come up with some serious thoughts. As I see it, things are about to change faster than a fellow can spit.” Across...

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Author: John Laneri

Contributor: E.S. Wynn - - “Doctor Williams!” Gerald glances up from the ragged chunk of glassy-smooth sediment in his hand, lets it fall, unremembered. Eyes rise through the bioplastic of his helmet, focus on the distant silhouette of a figure waving arms where a dip, perhaps a crater, breaks the monotony of the stone-scattered wasteland. “What is it, Dinsmore?” “Something interesting,” comes the vague response. “There's nothing interesting on this rock.” Williams grumbles, unwilling to budge. “Nano-survey said there would be fossils. All I see is a lot of pyroclastic breccia.” “This is way more interesting than fossils.” Dinsmore persists, and the sound of the grin in his voice makes Williams squint. Briefly, Williams considers calling up to the orbiting ship, requesting a Q-anchor to portal them back to the gate-bay. Childlike...

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Author: E.S. Wynn

Contributor: A@ron What - - “No, you have the wrong number.” A reasonable conclusion. As far as I know, that is not my name. My name is Character Label. I am a background description living in exposition. Of course, this could all be just some big misunderstanding. Perhaps, through some elaborate series of mix-ups, I am Xaiver Figueroa after all and this phone call was meant for me. There are two reasons I pick up. First, fuck you, it’s none of your business. You’re just the reader. I don’t even have to acknowledge your existence. Second, I don’t know. I’m drunk. “Could you please remove this number from your list?” Mid-sentence, the voice, this “person,” goes from words to sounds to hallow cadence to this stupid, repetitive, muffled bass line echo, thumping relentlessly, vibrating the floors, walls, everything, and I just...

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Author: Aaron What

Contributor: Miles Gough - - For a change of scenery, the Grand Fiend took me to an abandoned hunting lodge. We sat well above the city, that was now engulfed in flames. From our vantage point, it was hard to determine who were the humans and who were the marauding monsters. “Conflagrations are so beautiful to gaze upon and consider the joy of it all, don’t you think.” I was just happy to not be in chaos below so I had to agree. We watched for several minutes and I asked, “Do you know what the monsters are?” “I am sad to admit that I am not quite certain, though really, I think they are doing a fine job, a little on the grandiose side, but isn’t that anyone's prerogative? Monsters can interpret the job anyway they so desire.” Watching further, I began to see glints of light reflecting off some of the marauders. “Look at that, I think...

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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: Matt Shaner - - The apartment building is three floors, a converted house next to a river. The storm started the day before and now the four of us sit in my living room. Rain still hammers the windows. I’ve spread four candles in the corners with the remaining light coming from a pair of cigarettes. We lost power two hours ago. The smoke hangs in the room since I can’t open the windows. Lightening punctuates our sentences. “This is shit,” the girl says. She’s just out of college, blonde, wearing a sweatshirt and shorts. “I’m losing sleep.” Her apartment is flooded. “Sleep? This is like a movie. I wonder if the foundation will hold.” “Oh stop.” This is the couple below me. They are elderly and made their way to my place long before the sky darkened. I fed them dinner before we lost power and the water is now nearing...

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Author: Matt Shaner