Contributor: Peter McMillan - - Day 1 There was a different guy on the corner. I wondered what happened to the old man. Day 5 On the second day, the new guy greeted us pedestrians by humming loudly, "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go!" At first, it was funny, especially for the morning rush, but you were still torn between chuckling and wanting to throttle the mockingbird. In passing, something about the new guy—I called him Panhandler Pete—reminded me of a homeless guy I met when I was in college. I was visiting D.C. It was on the Mall and we happened to be sharing a bench. He told me his life story, at length and without any prompting. He'd been a psychoanalyst before getting blacklisted. He said he had no regrets though, not of any duration anyway, because he got rid of them by shouting through the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania...

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Author: Peter McMillan

Contributor: Jessica Schmitt - - He cracked his knuckles like an instrument. The muffled pops of individual releases was void here. His efficiency culminated in both hands simultaneously flicking away the tensions built in the minutia of his joints. He had that accuracy and efficiency in all that he did with his hands. Today these hands played chess across the room from her. Her knuckles were thin, curved in the bony way that lacks comfort. Not a motherly hand. She clearly played the piano, long fingers like that, it had to be. They didn’t appear to go together and yet they had. Married couples seem to fit after a while. Not in a puzzle piece way but in the way that Sunday afternoons and reruns of your favorite comedy go together. It just fits. You can inhale the comfort, the knowing closeness of two people so in sync. The first kiss...

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Author: Jessica Schmitt

Contributor: Samantha Seto - - Water brushed the current, greenery invaded my imagination, the sky had perfect clouds, soaring. Sunshine glazed overhead, pond water was murky, diluted filled with colorful fish and spiders. A white heron stood on drifting grass patches, explorers came to gaze down the water, looking for tadpoles. Quietness of pine trees and willows rustled in leaves, cold wind hit my skin. Shadows lined the dock, I could see my reflection in the water, traced the outlines, blueness in my eyes. Sunbathe burned, warmth to soul, frogs croaked, blowing bubbles in gentle blueness. Listening to wind chimes, wooden dock swiftly rocked back-and-forth, like a baby cradle. The moon caved in. The earth grew dark and dirt flew everywhere. My first instinct: I thought it was a natural disaster. But then people started to disappear...

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Author: Samantha Seto

Contributor: Lauren Erath - - Two bells and a pearly button on a purple ribbon, the clinking of such has always given me grief. Even so, Katarina insists that her bracelet is more bearable than my biscuits. Yet no guest has bemoaned my breakfasts, unlike the patter of this impatient pest, the trauma of which proves permanent. “They’re too soft, like Pirouette, and who would crave a kitten like that?” she asks, analyzing the bread as an artist would a brush’s end. Bored, Katarina places her thimble on her pinky, with which she clanks the candlestick holders. Her twinkly eyes wander about the worn table cloth. Meanwhile, Pirouette parades atop her shoulder. “Eternal child, take that cat from your shoulder and don’t tamper with the candlestick holders any longer. We can’t afford another catastrophe like last April,” I shrill amidst my...

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Author: Lauren Erath

Contributor: Nick Keller - - If ole J.C. could handle getting spiked to a tree, I guess I can handle sitting in this cell for a few years. They say he did it for us. Even for me. Sacrificed himself to save our dumb asses. I never really felt all the redemption I was supposed to feel from that day, though. Oh well, maybe it’ll be different for my brother. After all, I’m sitting in here for him. But that’s our little secret. He was always the smart one. Real clean cut guy. Went to college, got a degree, snapped up a job making some heavy dough, got himself a little wifey. Hot piece of poon, too. Good for him. Now they got a big home and two little girls. Real slice of the American pie, my brother. But me — shit, I’m the drop out. Rough around the edges. Tough as rust and don’t take no shit. A little stupid, I guess. Suffer from chronic...

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Author: Nick Keller

Contributor: Brent Rankin - - “It’s just not right! Him making all the rules.” The kid, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and his shoulders bent over, skulking in circles, kicked a brightly colored ball that exploded into orange glitter. He down sat cross-legged. Pulling the hood of his windbreaker low over his eyes, covering the skewed ball cap cockeyed on his head, he huffed. Whining alone, he said, “Can’t do that! Can’t do this! He doesn’t know everything. ‘I’m your Father and you work for me.’ Nay, nay, nay…what does that make me? Your slave? “Do as I tell you, not as I do! What an asshole….” Something white flittered out of the corner of the kid’s eye. He quickly reached over with both hands and crushed it in a clap. “Damn.” Then he heard that voice. That awful deep baritone. “Just what do you think you’re doing?...

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Author: Brent Rankin

Contributor: R.A. Conine - - She woke to a sort of fog. She had that sometimes. The world was blurred over, covered in an unnerving mist. It made her think of a particular old aunt who had milky cataracts, a woman long dead and gratefully so, from a childhood barely remembered. She wondered if the gauzy morning haze wasn’t some potent harbinger of her own future. She could see herself grown old and doddering, slowly going blind, a lifetime of scrabbling for hard cash wasted. She envisioned dying with the question “why” still framed by her wrinkled lips. The air in the room was warm, musky. She shook her head and the fog cleared, as it always did. That future, if it was hers, was far away. For now there was sun and warmth, freedom and the road. There was shame too. It was always with her no matter how far away she ran. Along with everything...

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Author: R.A. Conine

Contributor: Gary Clifton - - Old Captain DuPree, fifteen years the commander of Dallas Homicide arrived early as always, had four cups of coffee, then waddled down the hall for his morning constitutional. He dropped deader than last Years Christmas spirit. They pried him out of the stall, funeralized the remains, and began looking for a replacement. The Conga line of kiss-ups and related types nearly trampled each other in the fervor to crowd to the front to do their best work to land one of the most coveted jobs in the DPD. By the magic of the voodoo cop promotional process, the fools promoted Billie "Zero" Grifford to the job. Billie Zero was now Captain Zero. Zero was a total jerk - the world was home to many. Look up the word in Webster's - Zero's photo would appear. His career was meteoric. Proper maintenance of his public relations...

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: Eric Suhem - - “3rd floor souls, Hardware and Lawn Care!” announced the department store elevator operator, a round jovial man with twinkling eyes and a mischievous grin. Helen and her husband Don were in the elevator, carrying boxes of hats. Looking at Don from under her floppy hat, Helen said, “I had a dream that I was in a lobby of 400 elevators, each set of elevator doors a different color. Every few seconds, I hear the ping of one of the elevators, and I run toward its open doors, which slam shut as soon as I reach them. Then another elevator pings, I run toward its doors, they slam shut, and so on. So I keep missing the doors, but in the dream I’m learning how to miss the doors in style. My spiritual advisor says that all this has to do with issues of abandonment. What do you think, Don?” Don hadn’t heard her, as...

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Author: Eric Suhem

Contributor: P Morgan - - 2. Everyone was sick and this got into the food. It was the first time I had been inside someplace I wasn’t allowed out of, and it had been my idea, but even then I felt it wasn’t, really, that I had been put upon to do this, like it was a ponying-up of back dues to the mental health establishment for a few years of putting up with me. I didn’t eat anything the whole week. Watching televised rodeo with John, he explained how he wasn’t abusing Xanax or a danger to his kids, because he was a good dad. He could tell I was one, too. When his mom came to visit she told me to avoid contact with the law, because once you’re in the system, they’ve got you. Damn black-and-whites. This was when you could still smoke inside of some places, so she did. John called me, once, when we were both out, and I never listened...

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Author: P Morgan

Contributor: Leanne Gregg - - Audrey hugged her tuba case closer to her body in an effort to shield herself from the biting December wind. She squinted at the street--willing the bus to appear around the corner and pick her up at the stop. She wiggled her toes inside her tennis shoes, checking to see if they were still attached. They were. Ben came to the bus stop every morning at precisely 7:27 a.m. in order to stand in the same vicinity as her for a glorious 8 minutes and 45 seconds. Once, three weeks ago she said, “It looks like rain.” All he could do was grunt in agreement. Audrey spun towards the shelter and felt her tuba case make contact with a warm body. She heard a thud followed by a high-pitched yelp and a small explosion of index cards. Not again, she thought. Even though she loved her tuba, there were often times when she...

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Author: Leanne Gregg

Contributor: Uzodinma Okehi - - The lanceolate rush of ruled lines, of sunsets, of inked suns setting in pencil, of minutes, hours and days, right to this point. The something of something, get it? The butyrate fuse. The eclectic substrate of this and that, of childhood, your little tragedies, and you’ve got nothing but mean-time consider it. The tension, as always is also music, a kind of bad poetry, while the drawing itself is still pure science, like numbers, hard to crunch . . . And Sakura, if nothing else, I’ll take comics by titration drip, drip by drip, or that clack, clack of the wall-clock hands, in my ears and climbing like the roar of a hurricane. Sakura, what’s left but those comics I said I’d draw, those legends, and how legendary does it seem to imagine me here sitting in my long-john underwear, still drawing, but you’d...

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Author: Uzodinma Okehi

Contributor: MARK SLADE - - Bobby saw the fiend peering out from behind the large magnolia tree. This happened on the playground at school. The fiend was tall, very thin with large, black bulging eyes and blood red lips. The fiend was staring at Bobby, digging its long black fingernails into the skin of the magnolia tree. Sap bled. The white gooey liquid ran down the fiend's spotty hand. The night before the fiend had stood at the foot of Bobby's bed and watched him sleep. Bobby just covered his head and prayed the fiend wouldn't hurt him. It's safe to say Bobby didn't sleep much that night. Earlier in the day, while standing in line for lunch, the fiend tripped Monica Brant. She fell hard on the lunch room floor, breaking her nose. Everyone standing in that line had to go the principle's office and explain what they saw. No one saw...

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Author: Mark Slade

Contributor: C.J. Johnson - - Darren came home from work, anticipating, as he had all day, a cool, refreshing can of beer. Entering the kitchen, he whistled merrily as he opened the fridge. There were 8 cans remaining from the 12 pack he'd bought the day earlier; he intended to finish them off tonight. Scanning the few shelves inside the fridge, he stopped whistling and frowned. Where the hell have my cans gone? A note on the sideboard by the front door, left by his wife, informed him she had gone shopping and would be home roughly an hour after him. So he couldn't ask her. Where the hell had they gone? He searched all the cupboards in the kitchen. He searched the large storage cupboard. He even looked in the freezer. No cans. He searched through the rooms of their one bedroom flat, one by one No cans. Lastly, he entered the bedroom. He...

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Author: C.J. Johnson

Contributor: Will Lawrence - - He was reminded of a moment in the fifth grade when, during lunch, while lonely and eating by himself, two girls took a seat across from him and bluntly questioned: “Why are you so ugly?” Many of his current insecurities could be traced back to this instance, and over time he came to accept that he was not attractive; not a cover model or a sex symbol; not “eye candy.” Over time, he came to settle on the definition of himself as being a “face for radio, and voice for blogging.” His natural response to those girls, so many, many years ago, remained a distant cavernous echo in his thoughts: “Why are you?” - -...

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Author: Will Lawrence

Contributor: Marian Brooks - - Laura would rather sit through Chain Saw Massacre 3 D than spend an evening with Ted’s parents. They’re creepy. His mother, Gertrude, seeks her reflection everywhere, even in puddles after a rainfall, totally unaware that she might be standing in a slow current of shit. She fairly oils her way across the floor as she approaches. Laura can imagine her mother-in-law with a silver cigarette holder between her fingers if only she smoked. Ted’s Dad, Phillip, is a giant of a man at 6’6” with a voice to match. No one ever argues with Phillip. When he frowns, his eyebrows alone could sweep you up and into the dumpster behind the garden. To his credit, he is a world champion flosser. He has to bend his way through doorways. If only he didn’t bend once in a while. Now they have come to spend the weekend with...

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Author: Marian Brooks

Contributor: Mike Putnam - - We watched from our balcony as the hundreds of helicopters hovering over the lake suddenly began moving south. It took only minutes for them to be out of sight, along with the massive dome carried underneath. They were headed for what once had been Gary, Indiana, but in less than a year would be renamed New Chicago, Illinois. Shelly had our floor plan brought up on the tablet and was decorating it using an application she had downloaded. At one point she had exclaimed, “Ohmigod you can walk around.” I took a sip from the sweating bottle next to me, unable to believe something seemingly made of tough glass could withstand the effects of radiation and an indirect nuke impact. At the same time, it filtered air naturally through its walls. Science, I concluded. “Wanna see our new apartment?” “Won't I see...

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Author: Mike Putnam

Contributor: Michael W. Clark, Ph.D - - The plastic bag reminded him of something. Something in his past. The past wasn’t too far away considering his short life. But it was when he was three or four. When he was small and spherical of body. At least, that’s the way he remembered it. He used to play this game. He was a late walker too, so he spent a lot of time on the floor, a lot of the time on the hard, dusty wood floor. His mom wasn’t too interested in household chores so the floor was dusty, very dusty. “Dust Bunnies” one time his father called them. One of the times his father was home and actually played with him. One time that he remembered. So the game was called Dust Bunny. Dust bunnies were his only playmates, mostly. So he would imagine himself as a Dusty Bunny, blowing in the faint breeze. Even a foot step...

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Author: Michael W. Clark Ph.D

Contributor: Sean Crose - - After dropping Cory off at Logan airport for the long flight back to Europe, Ben, Lance and I began our trek back to Springfield. It was great taking a long drive through the summer night. The Mass Pike wasn't clogged up and we laughed and smoked cigarettes as we cruised through the state. By the time we stopped at a Burger King off the highway somewhere outside of Worcester I knew it would be a night I wouldn't soon forget. Not that anything special had happened – at least not at that point. It was simply the rush of being young, the rush of being out on a minor adventure that seemed like a major adventure; laughing, smoking and swallowing life in large gulp-fulls. It's great being young like that, when life seems endless, cigarettes seem harmless and everything has a feeling of newness and mystery about...

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Author: Sean Crose

Contributor: Gary Clifton - - Look up "no good scumbag" in Webster's and John Ralph Dupree's photo would appear. He laid around his aunt Mildred's house in south San Antonio, swilling sweet apple wine and sleeping most of the day. The neighbor's Basset Hound barked long and often, disturbing John Ralph's slumber. Not the sharpest of minds, he bragged around the neighborhood he was "gonna shoot the dog and blow hell out of the neighbor's house." He did both - dog and neighbor ended up deader than good manners. The cops sent out Chris Alvarez, eight years in Homicide and Polly Klevis, in the murder squad two months. Alvarez was big, tough, and thought himself to be quite an amateur comedian. Polly, naturally anxious to prove herself in a male dominated business, had been a quarter-miler at Baylor and could outrun anybody in San Antonio. Witnesses...

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: Brandi Gaspard - - We were both dealing with a lot of things that summer. There were the physical things, like: 1) how your missing left hand made you hide in long sleeves, even though they stuck to your skin so heavily in this southern heat. This wasn’t too much of an issue, though, because we spent most of our time sleeping, or watching your collection of tapes. The blinds were always closed. 2) how my own hand lacked any sense of tact, even with the best intentions in mind. The first time we shared sleep, I could tell that you were uncomfortable by the way you forced your breathing to be still, and quiet, and so I traced my fingers down your arm to make you feel better. But it was late, and dark, and I moved too close to what we didn’t want to acknowledge as gone, and I felt your chest sink. So I asked if we should...

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Author: Brandi Gaspard

Contributor: David Elliott - - Jacqueline could remember the moment of her birth. . . Unlike every other member of the human race, she could remember being torn away from the womb, moving from darkness into blinding light; a recollection as vivid as it was horrific. She could recall her eyes adjusting to the new environment, seeing the woman bathed in blood, and having the immediate insight, despite being only a few minutes old, that she had suffered, that she had died giving her life, that she was her mother. Other people, to Jacqueline’s surprise, seemed to have the luxury of permanent amnesia when it came to birth; a heavy veil drawn across their subconscious, shrouding the memories in darkness, preserving their sanity, perhaps, for the somewhat less traumatic life event of death. But not Jacqueline. Her memories were as sharp...

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Author: David Elliott

Contributor: Martin Goulding - - Google Drone View promised to end all earth bound mysteries. It was way passed Google Street View; this technology mapped and recorded every point it passed. The drones with Nano-cameras and nanotechnology quickly covered every square inch of the planet. There were a few restricted areas such as The White House and the Queen of England’s bathroom but other than that it was open slather. Initially strong privacy concerns were raised, then the voices of science and progress at any price, saw the great opportunity presented and championed Google Drone View, worldwide. Already underwater mysteries have been debunked with the tiny Google Drone-Marines—no Atlantis, no Lemuria, as expected; just rocky formations that only at first glance seemed to support the possibility of man’s hand. On land, all forests,...

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Author: Martin Goulding

Contributor: Marc A. Donis - - Og moved slowly along his morning commute. He was lost in thought. "Good morning, Og!" cried Ug, who had spotted him coming along the path. "Morning," muttered Og as they joined paths. "Sleep OK? You seem tired." "Nah, I was up all night. Couldn't get a wink." "I know a guy who's got this root. It might help you. You should really see him." "You mean Oog? That guy's a quack. No, thanks." "Have it your way," shrugged Ug. The two walked together quietly for a few minutes. "You know, I was just thinking..." started Og. "Not again!" sighed Ug. "Just listen. You know how you need a woman and a man to make a baby?" "Yeah... I heard some of the guys talking about that the other day. It's like they can't do it without our help." "Right! Well, I was just thinking... maybe it's the same for...

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Author: Marc A. Donis

Contributor: Amaranta DeBrefny - - I have seen unspeakable things in my life. Darkness, depravity, injustice—the list goes on. But not today; today is about the light, about fulfilling a dream, and maybe about getting some of my own back. Well, not so much the last part. The straw of my Mai Tai is a tiny thing, and I push it aside as I toss the little umbrella onto the table. Pulling my sunglasses down and leaning back in my sun chair, I’m committed to simply living today.             At least that was the plan. A shadow blocks out the heat of the tropical island sun, and knowing that a certain six-foot, bronzed someone is about to quash my plans, I sigh and slowly open my eyes.             “And here I was thinking you,...

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Author: Amaranta DeBrefny

Contributor: Eric Suhem - - Alma sat in the kitchen at the rickety Formica table, wearing a faded pink bathrobe, flicking ashes from her cigarette into a cracked cup of cold coffee, the crack running through a scenic mountain panorama on the cup. The clock said 5:38 a.m. and the crossword was half done as she stared at the tattered curtains. In a couple of hours, she and Mel would go to the coffee shop, as they did every morning. The coffee shop had a large lit cup of coffee situated above its roof, though cracked and fading bulbs gave it an odd, decaying appearance. In the torn plastic booths, she and Mel would make their breakfast orders: a poached egg, coffee, and toast for Alma; pancakes, bacon and coffee for Mel. Alma and Mel lived in an apartment on the 2nd floor of the Palm Vista Village on a slightly seedy, wilted-palm tree...

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Author: Eric Suhem