Contributor: Tony Rauch

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I swear I heard them outside for at least a month beforehand. Every night I’d crawl into bed a little earlier than the night before, to see if I could catch that flickering little twitter of a noise. It was always a mere buzzing. Or a faint humming. Just hanging in the air. Milling in the distance. Barely perceptible. Like the distant buzzing of the street lamp down the road by the swamp. Or like the mumbling of the air conditioner at the gas station. I mean, I could barely hear them. But they were there, somewhere out in that wet darkness of night.

Every time the coal train whistled, whining far off, fading into all that endless emptiness way out there (that nothingness just waiting to be discovered, waiting for someone like me to happen along and fill it up), they stopped for a bit. But then they always started up again after awhile. Real slowly. After the train had passed the fields.

I swear, each night beforehand I could feel that warm little hum, that slight buzz, that little gathering, that secret conversation, getting closer and closer.

Then one night I just couldn’t sleep, so I dropped out my window and took a little stroll. I looked up at the night and all its worlds, thick and moist and endless, a comforting home. It wasn’t very dark out as the big-daddy of a moon was up there hanging big and low, illuminating everything a strange silver gray, spreading shadows across the grassy fields. So I could see pretty much everything I reckon - the hay barn, the tractor shed, the granary, everything illuminated by the glow from above. The sky was so clear and the moon so close. It was like I could just reach out and touch it all. It was like it was all right there for me, everything waiting for me to spin it into action.

I kept thinking about the future and where I’d be next year, where I‘d end up. Could be almost anywhere after the summer. That scared me a little. Yet it was also quite exciting - graduating from school and now being free to do whatever I could find.

That’s when I stumbled across them. That little murmur, that tiny, faint humming. As I was out walking, searching for that noise, I heard that long thin whisper in the current of wind. I just suddenly caught it, picked up on it as I was scanning all the silver stars blinking above like dust in the sunlight, as if each star was blinking just for me. I picked up on that far away buzz and followed it. The weird thing was the noise didn’t get any louder as I snuck through the fields and marsh and woods to them. It was always about the same, just hanging in the distance, just riding on the breeze. Finally, I crept up on them, slowly crawling through the dry brush as to not make a sound. I wondered who could be out here this late: some transients, migrant workers, hobos, some criminals maybe, some highwaymen, or maybe a spy ring or something. And then I happened upon them. I crouched through the leaves of bushes and tall grass. They were gathered in a little clearing I never even knew was out here. It was a little bare spot. Cleared out under a group of trees. In a circle of thick brush. In a gully out behind the barn. A half mile to the west. The area they had cleared out was only big enough for maybe five or six of them.

I crept up behind a group of bushes and spread the leaves back carefully, quietly. The back of one of them obscured my view. A small candle in the middle of them flickered an eerie amber glow. I moved around to get a look at their faces, to see who, or what, they were. They were wearing long overcoats with large hoods. And then I went stone numb. . . They were people, the likes of which I’d never seen or imagined before. Little people with large heads and strange, tiny, deep eyes. And that’s when I heard it, that murmur of a whisper, my blood turning to ice. I just froze. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe - “OK, then, it’s settled,” one of them exhaled a breathy wheezing whisper, “. . tonight we ask Billy to join us.”


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Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

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Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Candy Caradoc

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The wishing well was situated, oddly, on the terrace outside the Café Voile. A shiny, gold and ivory, opulent-bordering-on-flashy attraction currently glittering in the moonlight. Also visible from the outside: crystal-clear windows (more glass than brick was that wall, and therefore impractical and wrong, as far as he was concerned), white tables with fancy chairs made of swirly-patterned metal, and the large, cursive lettering of the name above the main door. It’s all a rich-cunt’s fantasyland, he thought, what do they need a wishing well for, anyway?

He had stolen things in the past. Only minor things and only when he was in need. Apart from those incidents of mindless shoplifting in his school years, but which everyone grows out of and hardly count, he supposed. The issue was, he now believed, who you stole from.

So when he’d received an unexpected medical bill, overdue rent notice and extortionary car mechanic’s invoice all in the space of a week, he’d had a good hard think about where he could take some money without too much risk or too much damage to his conscience. And he had thought of the ridiculous wishing well outside that poncy café.

He’d only ever seen it from a distance. He couldn’t think what it could possibly have been if not a wishing well. And yes, sure enough, the cylindrical brickwork was half-filled with water and there were gold and silver coins, dully catching the light, at the bottom.

He had decided from the first that the easiest way to go about it would be to climb in, as long as it wasn’t too deep (it wasn’t) and he was prepared: he climbed in with his waterproof draw-string bag and, water level comfortably below the tops of his galoshes, got to work.

The idea popped into his head that some would accuse him of stealing other people’s hopes and dreams. His thoughts immediately addressed that issue, as though challenged (he had nothing better to occupy his mind, anyway). Firstly, he thought, these people are living every dream I ever dared to have, and then some. Secondly, who can really sum up their life’s aspirations in the flip of a coin? And, further to that, people rarely know what will actually make them happy. And finally, no one who spends about ten bucks on a slice of cake should be allowed to purchase their heart’s desire for a lousy fucking coin. Mere shrapnel cluttering up their designer purses. Dead weight next to their cheque books.

What about the innocent kiddies – is that what they would ask? Rich kids have it all and don’t even know what to do with it yet. Their problem, if anything, is having too much. Not to mention the irresponsibility of teaching susceptible minds to rely on fantasy. Bad enough that rich kids have the idea that they can sponge off their parents. Now they can sponge off the powers of a magical water-holder, too?

He was taking these coins, but he was giving something back: giving everyone a wakeup call. You want a castle? Get building. Want to be famous? Get your ass to an audition, and, preferably, hire an agent. And for God’s sake get some talent. And if you want to donate to the needy then by all means toss your coins away in some ridiculous, childish ritual meant to stuff further riches into your already glutted lives.

He’d finished – bag was damn heavy, too. These people liked a wish.

He climbed out and moved away from the empty well – a wishing well with no wishes to fulfil. He suddenly had the comical thought that a wishing well with no wishes on its “to-do” list may be so desperate for a purpose that it could actually grant a wish if someone would just give it a go – that even a supernatural fancy could get one thing right.

He stopped, reached into his pocket and fished around amongst the screwed up paper and cigarette stubs and rubber bands and gum till he found the small coin. Then he meditated for a moment before tossing the coin into the well.

He snorted sardonically at his own ridiculousness and walked away.

Well, fuck it, he thought. We all have a job to do, don’t we?

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Candy Caradoc lives in Melbourne, Australia. Last year she completed a thesis on uncanny representations of the effects of narcissistic parenting in Hoffmann’s The Sandman and Aronofsky’s film Black Swan. One of her stories, about a woman in love with a straw man, appears in Dog Horn Publishing’s Women Writing the Weird.

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Author: Candy Caradoc

Contributor: Joseph Carfagno

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We sat on the couch crammed so tightly our legs were touching, the popcorn was on the table in front of us, we didn’t touch it, our favorite show was on, live from Paris, we saw it on tape delay, each week a new remarkable guest. The host, prone to logorrhea, strode to the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very special show for you tonight. We’ll be talking to the smartest man in the world.”
The guest came on, he was thin, he wore a brown suit, he was a little shorter than medium height though that was probably due to the extraordinary smallness of his head, about two-thirds the size of an ordinary adult male’s. This head, in its mid-forties, had reached an advanced state of baldness, due, we conjectured, to the extraordinary brainpower it contained. Seated, he looked like a miniature. The host showed a short video clip that explained the origin of the guest’s intelligence. The usual authority provided the voiceover:
“Many people speak of synapses firing when they are engaged in profound or insightful thought. Though” – we were relieved didn’t say while – “it is true that sparks traverse our synapses when we think, we must still acknowledge the source and sustaining force of those thoughts. All thinking originates in the dendrites. By shrinking the gap between the dendrites, reducing the synapses to near nullity, thought becomes both more profound and quicker. Our guest became the smartest man in the world, a man who thinks as deeply as the Buddha and faster than any game show champion, by so compressing his synapses that his head, in natural sympathy, compacted.”
There were photos of the guest growing up, riding his bike and playing soccer as a boy, finishing off bicycle kicks, playing parts in university dramas -- that’s when his head started to shrink, it seemed normal before then -- his first job at the lab, and so on. The video ended with the guest, his tiny head filling up the camera, screaming at the top of his vocal range, “Dendrites are what matter! Dendrites make you smarter! Dendrites are all!”
The show broke for commercials. We remained silent, no one touched the popcorn, we were all silently wondering what amazing things the small man would say. The host came back. “Of course tightly packing the dendrites is merely a prerequisite, a necessary but insufficient condition, for extreme intelligence. They must also be cleverly arranged and have the power to originate and appreciate the most brilliant thoughts.” He sat down next to the guest, sipped some cold water, leaned over to him, and asked his first question. We all leaned forward for the answer, at last we’ll be enlightened, the camera zoomed in on him, we saw the tiny vocal cords quiver.


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Joseph Carfagno was born in Brooklyn but lives in Connecticut.

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Author: Joseph Carfagno

Contributor: Tony Rauch

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I tell ya, they buzzed back and forth - high and low, wooshing in angles, cutting tight curves, zipping across the pale blue sky - bright silver disks, big and small - piercing puffy white clouds, thrusting overhead, zooming around and around, whipping in great wide arcs above the tree line - zipping up into the atmosphere, down over the yard, sailing back out to beyond, and then looping back again just like that - with shiny blueish silver glinting off the sun, streaking bright lines and flashes in the morning sky.

I gazed in awe, kneeling on the living room floor, my hands on the picture window. “Ah, Dad,” I finally collected myself to stammer, “Ya gotta see this stuff. . . Take a look. . . You’ll never believe what’s goin’ on out here. . .”

“Yeah, . .” my dad swallowed lazily. He was lying on the couch, reading the Saturday morning paper. “. . They been doin’ that all morning,” he rolled over, folding his arm over his face to hide his eyes from the crisp morning light. “I’m sure they’re just showin’ off. . . Just goofin’ on us,” he yawned. “Wake me if any of ‘em have the guts to actually land, or if one of ‘em knocks on the door or something.”


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Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

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Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Troy Manning

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Tim’s house was fairly large and somewhat haunted. Most of the ghosts left him entirely alone and it is not good for a man to be that way. He would often try to talk to them but very seldom would he receive a reply.

Tim intentionally purchased a home near a cemetery so he might have company that he would neither have to provide for nor clean up after. The closest he ever came to that before were some sea monkeys he had as a child. They required nearly as little upkeep as the cactus he later was given as a housewarming gift.

The house in which Tim lived was a white North Carolinian manor. Just looking at it was enough to make one suspect it had ghosts. In the three years he lived there, Tim counted four of them. They were Kevin, Janet, Nancy, and Brad.

By far the tallest of the four was Nancy. She stretched to nearly eight feet. Tim knew this because he frequently heard the clinking of his chandelier that hung down six feet from a fourteen-foot ceiling. One could suppose she about stood five-feet tall and reached up the remaining distance with her arms, but Nancy didn’t have any arms. A pink sticker on her driver’s license said that any part of her body could be used in case of a medical emergency and those were the parts they used.

Coming in at just under five feet was Kevin. Compared with Nancy he was essentially a midget. Whenever he wanted to make the chandelier clink, he would have to use a stick or ask Nancy for assistance. Nancy was happy to oblige Kevin but when Tim would ask her to make some noise, the house would fall deathly silent.

Though only five foot three, Janet was easily the scariest of the bunch. Sometimes she would play with squeaky doors while at other times she would cause rotting flesh smells in different rooms of the house. Tim once asked her how she made those smells but she simply replied with a shrieking laughter that frightened him very much.

As for Brad, he was neither here nor there but sometimes everywhere all at once. Of the four, he was typically the most visible. Whereas the others were usually more effusive, Brad often took the form of a dense smoke. It brought Tim comfort, at times, to simply pull up a chair in the midst of him and reminisce about old flames.

Tim might never have known the names of his housemates if it weren’t for a friend that they all had in common. Cindy, one of those transient romances from Tim’s adolescence, reestablished contact with him through Facebook. He invited her to dinner and she, almost immediately, recognized the peculiar odor in the house as Janet. They often played together as children, Cindy explained, until Janet’s family moved away. Janet frequently suffered bouts of depression and burned her arms with cigarettes. As she seldom bathed, the sores would often putrify. Other than that, Janet was generally pleasant to be around.

Tim told her about his house’s other three inhabitants. By his descriptions, Cindy was able to put names to them as well. Recently, she had learned from a Tweet that Janet had been in a fatal car accident several years back while out on a double date. Janet, driving, lost control when Brad, her date, lit up a cigar then politely offered it to her. Nancy, an unusually tall girl who was keen on smaller guys, also succumbed in the crash, along with Kevin.

Though disturbed by this information, Tim took some comfort in knowing that those with whom he shared his home were practically his peers. Cindy soon joined the household through matrimony with Tim.

Becoming increasingly intrigued with things supernatural, Tim began attending a local seminary and was eventually ordained as an Episcopalian priest. While this made a few of the occupants uneasy, Father Tim assured them they could stay as long as there was no more smoking.


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Troy Manning is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California. He has recently been taking literature classes at Cal State University, San Marcos where his stories have been published in the creative writing program's Cat Ate My Chapbook, Fierce Notes 1 & 2, and the Spring & Fall, 2010 issues of Oh Cat.

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Author: Troy Manning

Contributor: Gil C. Schmidt

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A lifetime… in nineteen seconds…

Harry London slammed chest-first into the rubble, his helmet flipping up and banging against a chunk of concrete as ragged as a scream. Heavy machine-gun bullets chewed the air and dirt around him as he struggled to merge his flesh with the cover he so desperately had run to.

Across the charred and mangled street, strewn with several bodies in uniform and gray tweeds, Gunther Meis swung his heavy Vickers machine-gun in a deadly spray, trying to catch up to the British soldier racing desperately across the clearing to leap for cover. The Vickers was unwieldy, the narrow tripod legs slipping on the dusty floor inside the crumbled building that once housed a druggist and his medicines. Gunther cursed as the soldier skidded behind a concrete slab, the bullets spanging to fly off in unknown directions. He stopped firing to scan the street again, and the empty windows of the few remaining houses across the way. He checked the belt and grunted, satisfied he had ammo to fire a full minute’s burst if he cared to. He shifted his weight, peered quickly over the parapet and ducked as a bullet whinged off to his left.

Harry curled up, holding his helmet steady. The strap was broken. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bullets stopped. Rolling slightly left, he peeked at the machine-gun’s nest and saw the German soldier adjusting the gun’s position. Harry quickly sighted his rifle above the parapet and stopped breathing, heart pounding like a drum in his chest. Suddenly, the German raised his head and Harry pulled the trigger. The bullet went high and Harry cursed, rolling fast to his right to avoid the onslaught of bullets he knew was coming. He twitched a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin and held the explosive in his hand, silently counting One… Two…

Gunther turned his head away to avoid the dust coming off the wall and lunged back to pull the Vickers’ trigger. Bullets tore at the edge of the concrete slab, reducing it by chunks and cracks from vertical ledge to air. Gunther roared as the Vickers fired, slamming the gun to the left to rip at the top of the slab, then down, hoping to bounce the heavy bullets into the enemy. He saw a green-gray object fly up from behind the slab, arcing its way across the dead street towards him, and without thought, yanked the gun up and to the left to intercept the grenade--the grenade!--his roar becoming a mad shriek of rage.

Three… Four… Bullets shredded concrete to dust behind him, then walked like heavy rain across the slab to tear it above his head. The bullets then dropped to smash brutally into the slab’s lower edge and pieces of cement peppered Harry’s backs and legs. The slab was no cover there! Five… He threw the grenade in a stiff-armed toss, just like he was taught in Bingham, the thick-bodied metal apple curving up and away. Harry imagined it was flying straight and true, aimed with deadly precision at the machine gunner. He heard the bullets rise, then rise again as the hammering they caused became buzzing until suddenly a shriek of rage became--

An explosion. The grenade blew up as Gunther’s aim crossed its path. The shriek of rage rose to become…
Harry acted without thought, rolling to his feet as the explosion shredded the air everywhere, tucking his rifle and leaping to his feet, his mouth erupting into a shriek of rage that joined the German’s shriek…

Gunther saw the British soldier rise like a spectre, like a demon, from the blast’s cloud, rifle at the ready, shrieking just as he was…

Harry saw the German, heard him shrieking and pulled the trigger…

The shriek ended as the bullets tore through Gunther’s head and neck.

Nineteen seconds… A lifetime. In nineteen seconds.


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Gil C. Schmidt has been a regular submitter to Yesteryear Fiction since the early days when it was a daily magazine. His story "Initial Quantum State" is also featured in his book "Thirty More Stories." Get "Thirty Stories" and "Thirty More Stories" for free: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/gil-c-schmidt or http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/gilthejenius

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Author: Gil C. Schmidt

Contributor: Tony Rauch

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I move to the south side. Mostly to try and get something done for once. Everyone I know hovers around the north side. When I lived up there, people used to stop by every now and then, which was nice, but eventually it impeded my progress. I couldn’t get anything done. I vowed to change, but eventually I had to move. I guess, for me, it just got to be too much of the same ol’ thing up there. I needed an infusion of newness.

Unfortunately, after some time on the south side things began to get lonely. Sure I was getting things done for a change, but it wasn’t the same. Life didn’t seem to have that spark and flash to it. Colors seemed to fade.

I thought about this a lot, finally deciding to get involved with things on the outside more, so I started a music club, that is a group of people who get together and listen and talk about music. I figured this was a good way to expose myself to professional appreciators like myself, to music I may not otherwise happen across, and to stay connected to the outside world.

Every other week we get together, each member bringing in a song or three that excites them, makes them happy or sad or sleepy or whatever. This week we’re meeting at Dade’s, but when I show up no one is listening to music. They’re all sitting around watching Hockey Night In Canada [a news show that reports on all things hockey, from the low juniors to the majors, including the European leagues, but basically the news is just an excuse to showcase the fights of the day, which are always dismissed by Donnie, the amiable host, merely as squabbles, spats, tiffs, and the like]. Now I like watching Hockey Night too, but it was time to appreciate music, not time to appreciate hockey fights.

“Why no music?” I ask, concerned, thinking maybe someone passed away.

“We can do that another time,” someone mentions absentmindedly, without taking their eyes from the television.

“But . . it’s music time. Not . . not hockey time. . .” I stammer to myself.

Everyone else sits there watching hockey highlights.

“I like watching hockey too,” I finally say, “But when are we going to rock-out? And with wild abandon?”

“Maybe later,” Ray Ray utters unconvincingly, stuck in a hockey highlight trance.

“Well, did they change the time for Hockey Night?” I look around, concerned.

“It’s on much earlier now,” someone stares at the television, swirls of color and action circling the screen.

I look around and sigh, “That’s disruptive.”

“Gotta roll with the changes, guy,” someone yawns, staring, mesmerized.

The TV hisses a bad apartment fizz: “. . inching Moose Jaw up two points in the Prince Albert Conference. And now onto Quebec City, where it seems Tommy Luc Quey is involved in a minor disagreement with Hamilton’s Pauly Pierre.” The announcer, a hearty little man named Donnie Cheety, who appears as if an effeminately dressed cartoon Leprechaun complete with compressed wiry frame, red face, bright orange hair, tidy beard, green plaid velvet suit (complete with little vest), and little pink bow tie. Donnie is, shall we say, the excitable type, but very serious and dour when it comes to the fisticuffs, as if each daily dust-up is somehow holding society together, as if poetic metaphors representing our own struggles, as if cathartic releases of our existential angst or ennui, as if mini operas dramatizing the human condition - man fighting himself, man fighting against his own limitations in an indifferent world, man struggling against the confinements of society - as if each tiff worked to excise our struggles of the day. The news of the day was just a frame to build tension and suspense, to put a context around the fighting, the existential release of incomprehensible forces.

So the action switches from Donnie in the studio to two grown men whaling away on one another, arms a blur, heads snapping, sweat flying, a tooth being dislodged. And the fight goes on for a while, a mechanical whirl of extremities in a pair of windmill blurs, Donnie muttering in a fatherly tone: “Now now boys,” although it is not clear to me what that comment is in reference to. Then towards the end of the fight, when the referees finally manage to work their way in to break it up, when the combatants are spent and noodley, the show switches back to the studio where Donnie is turned to the side, looking down at a monitor beside him with a grave look of concern. Finally he swivels to face the camera, “While in New Brunswick, new commissioner of the Royal Academy . . .”

“What about dinner?” I finally mutter, looking around as the action subsides to the business affairs of running leagues and drafting junior players.

“We don’t have to hang out every night, you know,” Ray Ray yawns, which pretty much stops me right in my tracks.

“We haven’t met in, like, three weeks,” I sigh, disappointed and confused.

“Have a seat,” someone walks past me, someone I’ve never seen before, “Apparently there’s some good action tonight.”

“We gonna listen to music after?” I look around hopefully, “I brought demo versions of . . .” I trail off, a little hurt.

“Which ones?” someone mutters unenthusiastically, slumping low on the couch, staring at the television, nibbling on Chex Mix from a bowl in his lap.

I look down at my satchel, hanging from my arm. “Ah, ‘Nobody Knows’ by Destroy All Monsters. And, ah, Sissy Bar’s cover of ‘Gin and Juice’. And, of course, the biggie: Sonic's Rendezvous Band’s epic ‘City Slang’.”

“That all?” the Chex Mix guy, another person I’ve never seen before, again mutters unenthusiastically, “Got any metal?”

“Ah, only some Hellhammer,” I shrug, “‘Ready For Slaughter’. All three-and-a-half minutes,” I report.

“Nothing longer, huh?” the guy on the couch manages to seem disappointed and uninterested (or unimpressed) at the same time.

“I think there’s an epic eight minute version out there. Maybe what I have is edited from some original longer version,” I sigh, thinking they won’t care anyway.

There’s a pause, then the guy on the couch with the snacks comments, “Hellhammer. Yeah, Hellhammer’s good,” he looks away to consider this a minute, “‘Ready For Slaughter’. . . Haven’t heard that in a while,” he nods to himself, thinking. “Ready For Slaughter.”

“All three-and-a-half minutes,” I nod.

The guy on the couch looks back over his shoulder and smirks, repeating, “That all, huh?”

“Yeah. Really,” I squint and shrug, “Wouldn’t a very brief song illustrate just how ready you are for slaughter? As apposed to a filibuster?” I gesture, “Because, to me, I’m not convinced. No. I don’t buy it. That statement strains credulity. I’m incredulous,” I announce to no one in particular, as if thinking out loud.

The guy on the couch looks away and nods again, “I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem like they’re ready for slaughter at all.”

“If anything, it sounds like they’re stalling,” I shrug.

“Really,” the guy on the couch thinks, turning back to the television, “Come on guys, get off your asses and get on with it already. Geez. . . Sounds like maybe their heart’s not really into it.”

“And if you’re not quite ready for slaughter just yet, then fine, take your time, we can wait,” I look over to the television, “Misplaced your keys. Your girlfriend’s annoying, unorganized friend needs a ride to the airport. You’re stricken with the ol’ ennui. Broke a shoelace. Forgot to set the alarm. Your boss flaked and you had to work late. We’ve been there. We understand. No hurry guys. Really. Anytime. Whenever you’re ready for slaughter, we’ll be right here,” I shrug.

“You know, I’m just not feelin’ it tonight,” Dade walks past me to the television, yawns, stretches, stopping at the television, then turns and wanders into the next room.

Finally the announcer on the television looks back into the camera, “Let’s check back to Quebec City, in on how Tommy and Paulie are hashing things out between themselves.” And the drama resumes with Tommy and Paulie twisting free of the referees’ grips and meeting to flail away at one another again, finally losing their balances, slipping to their knees, bear hugging one another to the ground, then laying on the ice, side by side, taking turns punching one another.

“A nice way to resolve their little issue,” Donnie chimes in boastfully as the referees grab Tommy’s and Paulie’s legs and drag them away from one another, bloody, sweat soaked, and spent. “Now, doesn’t that feel much better?” coos a supportive Donnie, “Nice to have that off your chest and out of your system, now isn’t it?”

Tommy and Paulie slowly sit up, then stand, the referees holding them up and ushering them away from one another. Again, Tommy catches his breath, twists to break away from the refs who are holding him, and goes after Paulie.

“That’s the way, Tommy,” Donnie comments, almost egging them on, as if within each fight could be found a little life lesson, “No reason to give up so easily. Can’t get anywhere if you just give up. . . Wheeeeeeere does giving up ever get you?”

The refs grab Tommy and try to pull him back, eventually one jumps on his back, slowing him down. They work him to his knees, twisting him away, then raising him and leading him off as he struggles to get free.

“You’ll all live much longer with that out of your system,” Donnie reasons heartily, “No need to keep things bottled up and festering.”

The scene shifts back to the studio where once again Donnie is turned to the side, gazing longingly into a monitor, as if reliving a cherished memory of youth. He has his fingers to his chin as if considering some mythic riddle of existence. Then he slowly moves his gaze back to the studio camera, “Nothing wrong with a hockey fight,” everyone repeats, including myself and Donnie, Donnie reporting sternly in his thick Canadian accent, his eyes aglow as the station fades to a commercial, but the rest of us repeat it as if some contemplative mantra, not as in a monotoned relaxation technique or philosophy, but more as if from an ingrained gene.

Finally, through the confusion, pain, disillusionment and hurt, I say, “What if you don’t know what your place in life is? . . What if you . . . don’t fit in anywhere?”

“Don’t worry,” Dade calls from another room, “Donnie just signed a new three year contract. . . He’ll be fine. . . Really.”

“Bad case of nostalgia acting up?” someone asks in a reporter’s monotone, as if mimicking Donnie, then hitting the mute button on the remote to turn off the sound as a laxative commercial comes on.

“Guess I was looking forward to . . .” I trail off, as if thinking, adjusting my satchel on my shoulder.

“Let’s hear that Hellhammer,” the guy on the couch shrugs, “Break it out, man. It’s only a commercial,” he nods to the television which glows patiently, staring like a devil’s eye.

“Apocalyptic Raids or Demon Entrails?” someone asks, referring to which album the song is from.

“Yeah, I could maybe use a good jolt. A short dose of Celtic Frost, or Discharge might hit the spot right about now,” someone looks off to the distance, thinking.

This perks me up a little. I smile, “Yeah. Yeah,” and step forward, as if to indicate ‘that might work’. “I’m not sure what it’s from though,” I turn to the stereo.

“Bad day, huh?” the guy on the couch asks as I step to the stereo, bend, and remove the compact disk from my satchel.

“Bad week,” I report. “Bad month. . . How’d you know?” I poke the buttons to activate the rockage, but the guy doesn’t answer. The music comes on, the operatic opening chords churning to gain a chugging momentum to gallop around the entire room. I stare at the floor to consider the artistry on display.

“Hey,” Dade calls from beyond, “What is that? . . Hey, . . turn that up.”


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Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

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Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Tim Gerstmar

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The nitre oozes from the cracks of the crumbling stone. The water drips and runs along the grooves of the epitaph, life reduced to a few Roman letters and dates. The water rolls along the stone and falls into the deep puddles that drown the grass. The limestone dissolves slowly, minute by minute, hour by hour, as time has wanted it to do. Out of the cracks unnameable things crawl, slithering and sliding as the storm clouds thunder above and send the rain, renewing the land. They are the eaters of the dead, tearing off bits of flesh with their serrated mouths. However, they can only ingest solids, energy is another matter, in this case the energy of love.

A woman stands before the grave. Her long cold hands tremble. It's been fifteen years, and yet still she comes. She places the bundle of red roses wrapped in wet newspaper at the foot of the stone. She does not cry, and she never has.

The birds sit on a wet branch above her. They shake their feathery bodies and think about food and safety, and the young. They don't know about death, only birth. Such a small thing, and yet it can survive the elements, the harsh cold, and the damp that cuts and kills. To them there is only each and every agonizing moment.

Deep beneath the soil, past the roots and the stones, and the tunnels of earthworms, inside the wooden casket, pregnant with moisture, the parasites go about their noiseless patient task. A large drop of water forms on the inside of the lid and falls on the skeletal brow. It splashes right between the eyes, the space of sight, of the third eye, of remembrance and longing.

She cannot stand in front of the grave for too long, because then the real memory comes back, of passionate nights, of the thrill as they put him to rest permanently. Then they held each other, her and her lover, in the embrace of youth with the dampness of sweat all over them. They had finished him for good. They lay together in lust, fresh from the barbaric savagery and the pleading of her now murdered husband. The pain is too much now, and she turns away.

She walks down the long lonely overgrown path, back to her car. The wet autumn leaves stick to her cold bare ankles. A branch breaks above the woman, and some drops of water fall on her, sending a chill through her as they splash on her neck. The flap of wings and a black bird takes to the air, cutting a dark wedge shape in the sky, the branches of bare trees like veins against the clouds. Then there is something else, a cracking sound and the thump of something heavy hitting the ground.

It's amazing how unreal and distant it all seems now. She and her lover planned it out well enough. Her lover. Then he left her suddenly. She recalls the twisted wreck of the car and the police lights, the gleam of wet pavement. Then there was the horror as she saw him there, twisted and lifeless. How could he leave her like this? How could he let her suffer the guilt alone? She tells herself that she will be home soon, and that she will be warm in her own living room with the television playing low. She tells herself many fictions. She also tells herself that she doesn't hear the slow agonizing tread of footsteps on the trail behind her.


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Tim Gerstmar has been an ESL teacher for twelve years. He has traveled extensively through Asia and worked in Korea and Thailand. During his free time he enjoys writing short horror and science fiction stories.

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Author: Tim Gerstmar

Contributor: Tony Rauch

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I run up to our house. There are some strangers on the lawn and my father is handing them some of our belongings. “What’s going on here?” I huff out of breath, “Why‘re you givin’ ‘em our dining room chairs and grandfather clock?”

My dad looks down to me, “The entire village has to pitch in, not just us, honey,” he holds one end of the long ornate wooden clock and helps walk it down to a waiting horse drawn wagon on the road, “We lost at something and so we have to give some things up, that’s all sweetie,” he shuffles his feet to position himself as the strangers load the chairs into the long wooden wagon, “We can get by with out ‘em,” he helps to shove the heavy clock onto a blanket in the wagon. There are some other objects in the wagon - an end table, a cupboard, a butter churn – but none of them were ours. Another wagon shakes by full of other people’s belongings and passes to clomp its way out of town. Several men sit on the furniture in that wagon. The horses are galloping as if they are in a hurry to get out of here. “Maybe next time,” one of them calls.

“What did we lose at?” I ask in confusion.

The strangers climb aboard the wagon and lurch forward.

“A contest, dear. Just a contest. . . A thing we have from time to time,” he watches the wagon pull ahead and wobble on down the road and out of town, not letting on as to what exactly the contest was that the town lost. He has a strange leather glove on one hand, a big fat one, and bends to pick up a long piece of rounded wood from the grass at the side of the road. It looks like a smooth spoke from a wagon wheel, only a little longer.

My mom walks down to us, “Dang contests,” she spits in annoyance and shakes her head, her arms sternly on her hips.

“Hey, don’t feel too bad,” my dad chuckles. “We’ll get ‘em next time,” he looks down at me, then over to my mother and smirks, “How do you think I got this house.”


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Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.

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Author: Tony Rauch

Contributor: Don A. Gerred

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The horizon grew dark. Across the intersection of an empty access road, in front of a lifeless shopping center, barren trees of late autumn formed a wall of black shadows against the fading colors of an early sunset. Streetlights buzzed, signaling their intent to flicker to life.

All was quiet. No engine noise, no music, no voices; silence except for an occasional chirp from a bird with no plans for winter migration.

The horse-shoe shaped shopping center faced an enormous parking lot filled with cars precisely parked between yellow lines. Abandoned, the smashed, deserted vehicles disintegrated in the parking spaces. The burned-out shell of a late 80’s Honda Accord landed upside-down; roof on the sidewalk, wheels in the air. The beaten and battered hulk blocked access to a lane of neatly nested shopping carts.

The stores were dark except where faint light seeped from a few anemic signs. An ice cream store’s neon sign spelled “CAR.” “VEL” burned out long ago.

Thick layers of dirt covered everything, windows, sidewalks and cars. Safety glassed windows were cracked and shattered as though someone, or something, had attacked them with a car jack or a baseball bat.

Long ago, the door to a jewelry store window imploded. Gold, silver, Rolex watches, diamond rings, rare gemstones and glass shards intermingling on worn black velvet. Once beautiful baubles scattered among the debris, treasures too dirty to glitter and gleam any longer.

A boy limped passed the broken door, oblivious to his surroundings. In the darkening sky, he looked to be about sixteen, a teenager. He was tall and skinny, thick, curly black hair hung in his face, obstructing his vision. He shuffled along carrying some kind of long flat thing. His right hand pinned it tightly against his scrawny thigh.

He moved off toward the rear corner of the parking lot toward a steep concrete ramp. He paused at the top. A faded ‘wheelchair accessible’ sign dangled from a steel rail. His baggy, tattered three button Italian suit might have been an olive color once, now it was dirty gray. Both knees poked through the torn pants. His loose necktie was knotted with a Windsor knot; the color faded and the pattern indecipherable.

The thing he carried was a skateboard. He flipped the board upside down with an awkward jerk. The board was grubby and the wheels rusty. It looked like a kid had forgotten it in the front yard for an entire year. The current owner spun each wheel, one at a time, watching each until they stopped. As the teenager watched each wheel revolving freely, he muttered to himself in a barely audible raspy voice, “Good.”

Deliberately, he set the skateboard on the level, flat concrete at the top of the ramp. The board surface revealed a faded skull and crossbones emblazoned around the word ‘FLIP’ in its center. His movements were painfully slow. He stood erect. It took two attempts to get his left foot on the front of the board, even as his right hand clutched the steel handrail running parallel to the sides of the ramp. He paused and gazed intently across the street at the parking lot.

There was not a living soul in sight. He stood for a long time and gave the impression of searching for an image from a long lost memory.

His stiff right foot rose and rested firmly on the back of the board. He gingerly pushed himself backward and shoved himself down the ramp.

He was rigid, unable to bend his back or his knees, and unaware of the need. Gravity took over. Somehow, he balanced on the board as it accelerated forward, crossing the seams in the sidewalk with a quiet clack-clack, clack-clack.

The board went in a perfectly straight line. It was a little short of its maximum speed when the board intersected the steel rail at a corner point. There the ramp swapped directions to complete the route from sidewalk to the parking lot.

The rail caught the teen’s body at waist level. He was flipped off the board in a judo movement. The board rolled faster under its lightened load.

The boy hit the pavement face first. A thick black oily substance splattered on the concrete. His head bounced like a melon into the street, the rest of his body tumbled behind him.

The skateboard held its steady course. It passed under the railing, and under an Econoline van. I was halted mid-trip by smashing into a pile of rusty, power tools. The impact flipped the board onto its back. The racing wheels slowed and finally stopped. The board was lifeless once again.

The boy lifted his head off the ground high enough to look for the skateboard. A streetlight flickered above. He pulled himself off the ground in the same slow and deliberate manner he used to cue up the board.

His face had gravel and stones embedded in it, minor mutilations compared to his grotesquely, broken nose. His nose lay smashed flat against his upper lip. Not one drop of blood flowed from the shattered nose, just that black, oily stuff. He managed to get to his feet. He walked forward looking for the place where the skateboard crashed to a stop. Suddenly, he stopped. He either sensed or felt the injuries to his face.

He used his hands and fingers like a vise to squeeze the bridge of his nose. The cartilage cracked as he adjusted it. That facial feature was still crooked but no longer flat.

He looked around for the board, but couldn’t find it. Losing interest, he started shuffling away. Bright street lighting revealed the ripped back of his coat, and the grungy shirt underneath. Three large holes punctuated his upper back, exit wounds from a .357 Magnum. The wounds were open and oozing but not bleeding. Holes through his heart and lungs made it difficult to believe he could remain standing, let alone ride a skateboard. Impossible in fact. But then again, Zombies aren’t really alive, are they?


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I have a wife, three daughters and a female cat. It is hard to find time to write more than my signature on a check or a credit card slip!

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Author: Don A. Gerred