Contributor: David Macpherson - - I tell a bartender I hear tips is an acronym for “to insure professional service.” The bartender, still taking orders, says, “I heard that too and I think that’s bullshit. It can’t be true, and if it is, it shouldn’t be. It’s saying I need your bar change so I’ll do my job in proper like. It’s the latest Insurance racket. You got car insurance, health insurance and now you have mixed drink insurance, with an annuity rider for cocktails and personal injury in case you get hit by a champagne cork. Really. To insure professional service. I got more pride than that. I do professional service because I am a fucking professional. It’s what I do. I’m not an actor filling time between auditions. I ain’t a novelist working on my steampunk manuscript. I tap kegs. Pour stouts, mix drinks and talk up thirsty mouths...

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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: Rohini Gupta - - I know it’s there in the world of dreams – the hell of failed writers. It’s a dark, furtive, endless cave which reeks of stagnant despair and overripe frustration. It’s heavily populated. Until you look at that crowd standing there in the shadows, you don’t realize how many people wanted to write. Young and old, every race and sex and color and style, the highly educated and the dropouts, the wealthy and the starving. They are all there, shoulder to shoulder bound by the same darkness. They mill around angrily, snapping at each other, furious at being here, but yes, ashamed too. They know it is their own doing. The only bright thing about the place is the woman who sits at the lighted desk. She is bright and shining, sparkling and gracious in white. She has a large register in front of her and she checks...

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Author: Rohini Gupta

Contributor: Rachel Rose Teferet - - He never should have taken those tabs of acid. In truth, he had doubted their potency, as they were a year old, and had been discovered inside a library book, long overdue. Now, Jude is at the library, trying to pay his fine with much difficulty. “Sir. Your fine is fifty dollars; you have handed me a picture of your dog,” says the librarian, her face green and warty. She looks like a frog. Sure that he is being mugged, he hands over his entire wallet and whimpers. The frog hands it back with a sigh, and tells Jude to have a nice day, sir. He runs out of the prison lined with books―how the names of ancients glower from their gilding!―until Jude is panting in the sunshine, slumped against the book return box. “Hey Mister, are you okay?” Jude’s head snaps up. A child dressed in pink lace and...

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Author: Rachel Rose Teferet

Contributor: Kai Raine - - “What do you think the cover should look like?” “I leave that up to you. I love your pictures no matter what you do.” “Aw, you and your flattery. How’s the office?” “Boring as hell. But, you know, it’s a job. Would you believe, Felix got on my case again about my presentation? He went on and on about how it’s useless to have a PowerPoint presentation at all if I’m not going to put any words on it.” “Wait, was this the one for the ad pitch? With the beach and ocean pictures to create the atmosphere that you were pitching?” “Yes. Can you believe his nerve?” “Shit. Your boss didn’t agree with him, did he?” “Nah, she was more than cool with it. I’m giving the presentation to the higher ups in Friday.” “That’s great!” “Yes, it is! How’s the flying?” “Oh, you know…routine. But in my line of work, routine is good....

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Author: Kai Raine

Contributor: Donal Mahoney - - When Barney Murphy married Blanche O'Brien, he told her almost every day from the wedding on that she was apricots and peaches, an orchard that was his alone to wander, plucking fruit as he saw fit, all of it ripe and juicy, something he would savor for the rest of his life. Blanche, a shy woman, really liked the way Barney could talk. He made nonsense sensible, she told her parents. Blanche was a very happy wife. From the sixth month on during her first pregnancy, Blanche would ask Barney every day to pat her watermelon. When it finally burst, a boy popped out, and then a girl right after the boy, and then another boy right after the girl. Blanche had given birth to triplets within minutes of each other, lovely infants, all three of them plump and crowned with hair that ran in rivulets of curls. Six...

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Caitlin Brodie - - They tell you to worship the sun. Worship him for his light and fire and heat. Worship his brightness, even as it claws at your eyes and you beg to look away. They give him ten thousand gods, and as an afterthought they give a name to the darkness, call him Death, and tell you to never speak his name. Speak my name. Don’t be afraid. God of darkness, God of disease, God of blindness, God of night. I existed long before you. I will exist long after you. I remember with my hollow eyes the beginning of it all. I walked this rock you call home, embraced it all, loved it all, fell asleep with the sun on my back and when I woke, I was named Evil. You people blame me for shadows, blame me for the bad things that live in my heart. But you can’t have shadows without light. Show me a good man, a kind man, and I...

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Author: Caitlin Brodie

Contributor: Lindsey McLeod - - Saudade is a unique Galician-Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English; it describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. I have been waiting for what seems like days. Tick tick. You have been gone for an indefinable amount of time, and left me with her. I know she hates me - that much has been made perfectly clear. I'm not exactly keen on her either. She resents the bond we have together, the closeness, the daily walks to the local swingpark which thankfully so far you have not invited her to come on after that first disastrous attempt. Tick. She is my enemy for your affection, the strange body sleeping in your bed, taking up space in the already too-small flat. Tick tick. It is not that she has forced me into the kitchen,...

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Author: Lindsey McLeod

Contributor: Steven Winters - - The sound of conveyer belts and the news, shown on dusty 90’s television screens, dominate the empty baggage claim as she stares toward the escalator which leads from the main terminal. Even as the broadcast tells its usual tales of death and debauchery, it matters little to her. She waits there in an ivory dress, the one she wore the day he first met her all those years ago. A small, tear drop sapphire rests several inches above her chest; the first gift he ever gave her, “It accents your beautiful eyes.” All that matters to her is that he is coming home from the war front, and she wants to meet him the same way they first met. The rain that patters outside even has a romantic ambiance as she can see them walking through it together, clasping hands in a downpour as happened on their wedding day. Even...

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Author: Steven Winters

Contributor: Chris Sharp - - She had to make herself move at some point. For over a half hour, her stillness matched her stolid living-room furniture. At last she stood with the oxygen brought on by one of her deepest sighs. At two in the morning, she wondered how her former husband was getting around and moving about in his own house. “Geraldine?” said Serge, her new husband, a minute after she returned to the bedroom and slipped back into the bed. “What?” “I thought you were going to read.” “I was.” “I thought I heard you talking.” “I was reading aloud to give myself some company. Now I want to go back to sleep, Serge. Okay?” In the middle of the night, Geraldine had made the habit of leaving Serge in bed so she could read in the living room and “make my eyes sleepy.” “Otherwise I’ll be lying in bed for hours keeping my...

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Author: Chris Sharp

Contributor: Linda M. Crate - - She never loved her boyfriend. Not once. Not even for a fleeting second. She had never liked the thought of being someone’s prize. She was not interested in cooking or cleaning house or popping out fifty babies. Yet her mother seemed to think she ought to have a boyfriend. It’s how this all came about. Her mother was forever chastising her about fulfilling her role to society. Women were meant to marry men, carry their offspring, and to offer something to the world. She had no problem with the latter one — it was the first two that she had a problem with. It wasn’t as if she had a problem with the institution of marriage, if someone wanted to marry they could, but to her it was archaic. It was being chained in an enslavement of someone else’s needs. It may have been selfish, but she wanted to soar on...

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Author: Linda M. Crate

Contributor: Donal Mahoney - - Jesus, can we talk? Some folks say you're coming back any day now but many of them have been saying that for years. They say it could happen tomorrow, or maybe next week, and they've already put their affairs in order. They believe they will be swept up and taken into heaven, leaving many others on the ground, just standing there, slack-jawed and staring at all the backsides rising in the air. I'd like be to among those rising but my Baptist barber says he doesn't think papists will be issued passports for this trip. I've been his customer for 30 years so he plans to take a rope along and drop it down to me. If I grab hold and can hang on, he says I'm welcome to come along if Jesus doesn't cut me loose. I may be a papist, he says, but he knows from all our haircut debates over the years that I believe...

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Tony Battaglia - - When John turned eleven, he got a throwing-knife for his birthday. He'd seen it in the glass case of a shop on Water Street when he went in with his father to buy bread and milk and tobacco, and it had reminded him of a scene from that movie The Magnificent Seven, which he'd been allowed to see only after cleaning his room. He'd begged for it, and his father had said, "Maybe for your birthday." The knife was a squat, flat strip of metal, blunt and straight along most of its length but carved and sharpened to a point at one end. John's mother had tested it on a veal cutlet she was preparing in the kitchen and declared it to be safe enough. John spent the rest of his birthday in the backyard, throwing the knife with all of his strength into the upper branches of the big maple tree, then watching it bounce...

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Author: Tony Battaglia

Contributor: Maddison Scott - - Underwater, his face whirls like a metallic dream. I want to reach up and touch him but he isn't mine. I latch to a thought I had one summer when I was home alone. I took to the water with clothes still clutching wrinkled skin. When I held my breath, I was pulled away from the sky. There was no sound, only the dim whimper of my heart breathing. It wasn’t difficult to imagine myself as a wreck on the bottom of the ocean, waiting to be found. I can't hear my name but I see a dancing smudge of pink. It’s my sister. She's waving me up like a distressed Pelican. When I hit the surface, I’m reluctant to anchor my eyes. If I look at him, she’ll know. “Don’t drown,” my sister clicks, as though the moments are wasted in my presence. My fingers skim the side of the pool and when she’s out of view, I founder. I...

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Author: Maddison Scott

Contributor: John Laneri - - I recently worked Montgomery Forest, a state wildlife preserve in East Texas. My intentions were to reappraise the site before opening it to the public. As usual, most of my day was routine. Around five o'clock though, after an uneventful ten hours of following animal trails, I tucked my notebook away and turned for home. By then, I was ready to call it a day. A few minutes later though, I heard movement in the brush. Curious, I stopped to take a closer look, wondering if the sounds were coming from the immature bobcat that had been tracking me for much of the day. I first noted its footprints near a creek earlier in the day. After failing to see any activity, I continued on, remembering that Maggie expected me to attend a dinner party with her club group later that evening. Suddenly, I spotted a snake...

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Author: John Laneri

Contributor: Casey Sean Harmon - - Ever since the night of the terrible thunderstorm, Susan, the Bull Terrier, had a suspicious turn of mind. Everyone knew it. The Anderson family worried something fierce over her, for she no longer spent her time loping in the back yard or playing ball with the children. She wasn’t an old dog, either. In fact she was quite young. There was still that cute puppy look on her face and her tail still managed to wag whenever that certain spot just above her stomach was rubbed. Well, it did wag, before the awful thunderstorm. The fact is that no dog ages that fast. No dog. But it wasn’t until the night of the 7th, just as the old clock in the den struck 9:00, that Mr. Anderson started believing that the Bull Terrier was no normal dog. He was writing in his record book, of course. Mr. Anderson, being a man...

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Author: Casey Sean Harmon

Contributor: David L. Nye - - “Ambulance needed at corner of Murphy and Seven. 82 respond.” It always starts with a call. The driver tears toward the location and, before I know it, we have the patient loaded in the back and I’m trying to keep him going as we fly to the emergency room. This time, it’s a car crash victim and I’m pumping fluids into his veins to replace the blood still leaking from his thigh. I’m focused, clear-headed. I’m off my medications. The meds keep the voices away but they make it almost impossible to treat patients. I lost a man because I couldn’t work through the fog, never again. “Ten minutes,” Ben, the driver says. I check the bandage again; the bleeding seems slower but I can’t tell for sure without removing it. I check the blood pressure… too low. I increase the IV flow, the saline will increase the volume...

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Author: David L. Nye