Contributor: Daniel Rosales

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Martin Clark is not a man unlike most, he requires and breathes oxygen, eats and secretes feces like the best of us, and by that I mean people such as presidents and celebrities. However, upon medical examination of said waste you would find the difference between a Herbert Hoover deuce and of fools making some claim to fame; and that of our inadequate narrator’s eating habits and disparaging quality of subsistence. The reader could even determine Clark is malnourished by the coloring of said deuce, but we aren’t here to discuss the fecal matter of someone belonging to the lowest strata of society. Instead this is the tale that begins and ends with Martin Clark. A former prominent Congressman turned destitute bum; looked down upon by former colleagues, and even other beggars. He felt so lowly that it often crossed his mind that if the feral and unwanted meandering cats and dogs were able to talk they would snicker and berate him as well.
But let’s start from this tale’s exposition, the beginning of our narrator’s career: when he proudly and arrogantly paced the halls and chamber of Capitol Hill; slowly and indiscriminately making enemies with rival party members and those of his own party alike.
Clark was hated by members of the opposition because he took delight in thwarting any of their attempts to pass legislation in favor of destroying the tyranny of the majority while preventing the rule of the minority as well.
In time he grew greedy and hell bent on gaining higher office, making him wary of those members of his own party he saw as competition. With avarice and grandiose delusions in the depths of him, he set out to do whatever was necessary in order to gain the power he desired. Clark, through ill advice from his greed began dealing with the wrong type of people -murderous thugs, whose only loyalties were to money and themselves. Clark then proceeded to place a bounty on several of his own party’s leaders, removing any and all that stood in his way. In his dealings with these fearsome murderers he became part of something he had never intended. Never intending on getting caught, losing his job, the death of his wife and kids; no he never could have predicted such calamity, but life always deals in the unknown and unpredictable fashion.
As it turns out, the hit men he hired were being tapped and followed by the FBI, and all his happenings were being reported straight to the Attorney General. Who let it play out longer than he should have in effort to gather enough evidence on both men and arrest them. However life has its own plan and doesn’t concern itself with the will of men.
In what should have been a successful hit the hired guns realized that they were being followed, and perhaps their new client was to blame. Upon realizing this, they decided to make a statement and turn on their employer.
His family became the hit.
In what Martin thought was his moment of glory; life dealt him an agonizing hand. When he expected the hit to be happening in a place far away, it was happening in his own backyard so to speak. The men crept in like vermin in the dead of night. In a blinding flash and deafening bang two things occurred, the death of his beloved wife, and a rude awakening. In the face of his assailants he begged for his life and children to no avail, they were there to show him who he was dealing with.
After the fact Clark pieced together what had happened, and what had gone awry. He couldn’t say how but he knew that he too was being followed and tapped. In light of this information he did the only sensible thing and left; ran far away, away from the grasp of his assailants, and the justice of the law. He dove into the lowest depths of society, sharing the life of those he once denied escape from their poverty; forced to live on the scraps of the scraps of vagabonds.
It turns out dear reader, that, that vagabond is none other than I, your deplorable narrator -Martin Clark.
No longer able to live in these conditions, emotionally maimed by the loss of my family and status, I no longer can face the dawning of a new day or the twilight of another night; hunted by my thoughts and guilt.
With these, my last words filled with remorse and regret I beg forgiveness though expect none. I apologize from the bottom of my heart and depths of my soul.

With sincere regret,
Martin Clark.


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Author: Daniel Rosales

Contributor: Holly Day

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I pick up the newspaper and I see her picture on the front page. Every morning, across the aisle from me on the bus, she sits there with her swollen eyes and her chipped teeth and her layers of pancake makeup, trying to hide the destruction of the night before.
For weeks, I’ve tried to work up the nerve to ask her where the bruises come from, who hurts her, why she puts up with it. For weeks, I’ve made plans to become her friend, only chickening out at the last minute. I don’t want to get involved in something I can’t handle. I don’t know how to do these things.
I’ve convinced myself she’s a boxer, a wrestler, a rodeo clown, a personal trainer. Of course, I know all these things aren’t true, because she’s so small, too small, and women who do those things usually have muscle tone, height, an aura of self-possession, self-confidence, excessive body hair. She has none of these things. She is so small. One more punch in the face and she’s done for.
I see her picture on the front page of the newspaper, down at the bottom half, just after the fold. Someone punched her in the face one too many times. Her body was found half-submerged in water, under the bridge. Her clothes were ripped as though they had caught on something on the way down. Someone had thrown her off the bridge, probably after she was dead. I don’t even know her name. The newspaper says the police don’t know her name.
If I had talked to her, just once, I might have known her name. I might have known something about her, something I could tell the police. I could help them find who did this to her. I can’t help them. I clear my throat and work loose the knot growing in my chest. My husband looks over the table at me and asks if anything’s wrong.
“No. It’s nothing,” I say, and pour myself another bowl of cereal. I turn the page. The woman goes away.


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Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poetry and fiction has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream.

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Author: Holly Day

Contributor: Patricia Crandall

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The Sipperly family of Virginia were anxious to move into an old homestead they had acquired in upstate New York. The front of the house faced a little stream of water poetically called Plakapots Killitie by early Dutch Settlers. In back, ran the Hudson River.

When they arrived to claim their new home, a Husky lay possessively across the threshold. Assuming he was lost, or left by the previous owner, the family adopted him. The dog came and went regularly, being of no trouble at all. Etched into the wood panel of the upstairs mantelpiece in the large old-fashioned parlor, were the words; La Vita Comincia Domam.*

The Sipperlys were presently incorporating the original fireplace bricks to renovate the upstairs fireplace.

Ada Sipperly was shocked beyond belief when her husband, Tom, discovered the hearth had been the gravestone of Cornelius and Henrietta Yates’ daughter, Sarah, who died April 20, 1842, at the age of eleven. Ada pleaded with Tom to return the gravestone to the family burial plot located on a hill one-half mile beyond the house.

Tom looked pensively at the stone and decided he would use the slab for the new hearth.

Ada vehemently protested even to the point where she vowed she would not step foot into the room if her husband proceeded with the original plan.

Tom relented to his wife’s wishes and the fireplace was built using local granite for the hearth. The day after he returned the original gravestone, setting it in place in the wooded family plot, the Husky howled continuously and paced up and down the road. Just as suddenly, he disappeared…never to be seen or heard from again.

*Life Begins At Home


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Author: Patricia Crandall

Contributor: Andrew Wayne Adams

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The birthday boy lifted the AK-47 from its box. He grinned and said, “Thanks, Kevin!”

Kevin grinned back, chocolate cake smeared around his mouth like a larger mouth.

The birthday boy pointed his new AK-47 at the balloon artist. “Mother promised the best balloon artist in the world.”

“I am the best in all worlds!”

“Prove it,” the birthday boy said, and fired a warning shot into the ground.

The balloon artist yelped. He twisted a long slender balloon into the shape of an Old English Terrier. A pearl of sweat quivered at his temple as he presented the Old English Terrier for inspection.

Kevin sneered. “Not very realistic.”

The birthday boy put a bullet in the balloon artist’s kneecap. The balloon artist folded to the ground, allowed himself two seconds of terrified screaming, and then launched into the construction of another animal.

It was his greatest work ever: a life-sized zebra with functioning genitals and the brain of a philosopher-king. The zebra spoke, introducing itself as the Alpha and the Omega.

The birthday boy fired his AK-47 at the Alpha and the Omega.

The zebra thrashed, balloon organs exploding. Scraps of latex rained down to litter the earth, all trace of divine intelligence gone.

Kevin high-fived the birthday boy.

The balloon artist allowed himself three seconds of bereaved weeping—the Alpha! the Omega! murdered!—and then launched into the construction of, not a balloon animal, but a balloon weapon: an AK-47.

He squeezed the trigger, and the gun fired a barrage of sewing needles and lit cigarettes. A needle hit the birthday boy, and he popped like a balloon, his own AK-47 clattering to the ground. Kevin screamed, and then he too popped, pierced by the cherry of a cigarette.

The balloon artist swept gunfire through the birthday party. The guests popped, popped, popped. The cake (an enormous chocolate octopus) popped; the presents (pastel boxes that sweated and coughed) popped; the petting zoo (pygmy gorillas and defanged cobras in an enclosure of hay) popped. Scraps of false cheer rained down and turned to mud, all trace of the birthday party gone.

The balloon artist kept firing. In the distance, a stand of trees popped. A line of hills popped. Everything between him and the horizon—popped. He stood alone at the center of an empty plane.

His gun floated out of his hands, into the sky.

He tried for years to recreate his greatest work. He produced zebra after zebra, but none were the Alpha and the Omega. He rejected them, and they galloped away to start their own civilization.


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Andrew Wayne Adams is an American writer/artist. He was born in the Midwest in the 1980s. His work is largely unknown, because it largely does not exist.

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Author: Andrew Wayne Adams

Contributor: Valerie Z Lewis

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Adam craned his neck to see over the lip of the tall kitchen trash bin and searched for the can he'd dropped inside.
Adam hated his new house. There were too many things he wasn't allowed to do. He wasn't allowed to wear his sneakers inside. He wasn't allowed to play with his soccer ball in the driveway. He couldn't go in the living room at all, only the smaller TV room. He wasn't supposed to make noise in the morning, not even talking noises, because it would wake up his step-dad, his fake-dad.
Adam liked school better, where he could talk whenever he wanted, and he even got stickers for answering questions in Math. At school nobody yelled at him. If he broke a rule, instead of being yelled at, he would have to sit in the Time Out Chair for five minutes. School was also good because his friend Pauly would teach him a bad word in exchange for a quarter.
Adam's step-dad was an asshead.
Every time Adam came out of his room, he would hold his door open just a little bit, just a crack, and he would press his eye to the opening and look for asshead. He didn't want to come out of his room if it wasn't clear, because every time he saw asshead he got yelled at.
At school a man dressed like Captain America came to their class, which was stupid because Captain America died like six issues ago. But Adam paid attention anyway. He didn't want to get the Time Out chair.
Captain America said all kids could be heroes if they cared about the environment. He said that, by recycling and not wasting things, they could save the world.
After school Adam's mom gave him a Gatorade and told him not to talk because asshead was taking a nap. Adam tried to be quiet, he really did, but he accidentally dropped a knife when he was setting the table. Asshead came stomping out of his room, his feet heavy on the wood floor, like a giant, screaming that he couldn't get any sleep around this stupid worthless kid.
Adam sat down on the floor and started crying. Asshead kept screaming, and his mom put her hands on his chest and said, "I'm sorry, honey, I'm sorry." When asshead went back to bed, Adam's mom hugged him and whispered, "Shhhh." It was time to be quiet again.
"Just stop crying," his mom whispered. "And I'll give you anything you want."
Adam stopped crying and asked for a quarter.
After dinner, when Adam was clearing the table, he put his Gatorade bottle in the trash instead of the blue recycling bin. He didn't want to save the world.
At school the next day, Adam answered two questions in Math and read a paragraph out loud in Reading. Miss Ellway gave him a small eraser shaped like a strawberry as a prize for being so good, and Adam hid it in the bottom of his pencil box so no one could find it. In Art, when he was drawing a picture of his mom, he used another eraser, so the strawberry would stay perfect forever.
That night at dinner, dickface yelled at Adam the whole time. He said Adam didn't eat enough of his green beans, and scraped his fork too loud, and was a spoiled brat who made his mother work too hard.
When he was cleaning up, Adam put everything in the trash: the leftover food, the silverware, his mom's soda can, and dickface's beer bottle. Dickface found it in the morning, and Adam woke up to screaming. Dickface said he was a little psycho, a worthless piece of shit, and a bastard no one wanted. Adam pulled his blanket over his head and blocked his ears with his fists, but he could still hear the screaming.
Adam craned his neck to see over the lip of the tall kitchen trash bin and searched for the can he'd dropped inside. He spotted it peeking out from underneath a wadded-up paper towel. He tugged on the edge of the trash bag until the can slipped down, disappearing into the depths of the garbage.
Adam pressed his face against the open crack of the kitchen door. He could barely make out the figure on the couch, sickly white in the light of the television.
"Just wait, motherfucker," Adam whispered. "Just wait."


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Valerie Z Lewis is a writing professor in New York.

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Author: Valerie Z Lewis

Contributor: Steve Karas

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"David is in the front of the building,” the secretary informed me. “Lying on the concrete. Again.”

This was why I’d become a social worker at El Dorado High School. To save America’s youth. To save the world.

David had transferred in from Vermont. Within the first few weeks of the school year, it had become increasingly evident that Hobson, the veteran social worker on staff, had dumped his most difficult cases on me, the rookie. Hobson, on the contrary, spent his days between the faculty lounge and dealing with family disagreements over car privileges.

I walked outside. Through his bird’s nest hair, David picked at his scalp with the tip of a pencil. He had on the same knit sweater he wore every day, even though it was eighty-five degrees. A camera case hung from his neck like an Olympic medal.

“What’s going on, buddy?” I said. He sat up.

“I’m consumed by a great philosophical conundrum. Free will versus determinism.”

The kid was smarter than me. I.Q. of 139, 99.5th percentile. I didn’t follow.

“Determinism. Nothing is uncaused. Everything that happens must happen. Your actions are part of a causal chain that extends back far before your birth and each link of the chain determines the next link on the chain. Hence, although it may appear that you have control over your present actions and mental state, you, in fact, do not.”

In his short life, David had already racked up an assortment of diagnoses: Asperger’s Syndrome, Schizoaffective Disorder/Bipolar Type, Anxiety with Panic Episodes, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

“I used to have such potential,” David said, “but now I fear I’m going mad and will be a complete nuisance to society. An ignominious fool. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I might as well be gone, swimming with the fishes.” A bee lifted from a potted geranium and circled him. “Oh, dear God,” he said, ducking and weaving like a prize fighter.

Here was David’s history: Dad and Mom were both alcoholics and God knows what else. Dad had made a handful of unsuccessful suicide attempts in the past. Maternal grandparents were pathological hoarders. An aunt was Schizophrenic. Truth was, kid barely had a puncher’s chance. By third grade, he was pulling knives out on his mom and threatening to jump from third-story windows.

“Whatever your conditions,” I said, “there are treatments. How about your medications? They help, don’t they?”

“I stopped taking them. They were speeding up my downfall, making me glib. Besides, that’s no cure – pumping me full of pills, turning me into a zombie.”

Hobson poked his head out the door. He signaled me over. I hesitated for a moment.

“Give me a second, David.”

“What’s going on with him this time?” Hobson said.

“He’s okay. Just having a bit of an anxiety attack. I’m talking him down.”

“Talking? Can’t fix a guy like that. Why don’t you get in touch with his mom? Tell her to pick him up, take him to hospital for an evaluation. Tell her he can’t come back to school without a doctor’s note.”

When had he forgotten why he’d entered the field? The helping profession. Had he been soured by bad experiences or had he just become immune to people’s pain?

“He’s a capable kid,” I said. “He’s sabotaging himself.”

“He’s nuts. C.Y.A., young gun. Cover Your Ass.” And then Hobson’s smile dropped. That’s what I remembered. His eyes widened. “Oh shit,” he said. “Oh boy.” And there was a loud splash. I turned to see David flailing in the school pond amongst the blue-green algae and carp. I ran in to call 911. Hobson hollering behind me, “I’m not going to say I told you so, but I did.”

#

By the time the fire department rescued David from the pond, half the school’s teachers and students were pressed against the windows looking on. Hobson was surrounded by other staff members, no doubt telling them how the kid was crazy, how he never belonged at El Dorado in the first place. I stood next to David’s mom. She had leathery skin, a purple nose, and breath that smelled like an ashtray.

“I wish he would just try to fit it,” she slurred, arms folded. “I don’t know how many times we’ve been through this. A woman can only take so much.”

David sat on the stretcher, wrapped in towels, his hair like seaweed. I wanted to hug him, comfort him, but you couldn’t do that in schools these days. I walked over and patted him on the shoulder, told him he’d be okay. I told him it was just a bump in the road and that he’d soon be back to his old self, whatever that was.

“Everything will be fine, buddy,” I said. “We’ll see you here in school shortly.”

David ended up hospitalized for a month. When he was discharged, his mom sent him back to Vermont to live with Dad. I never saw him again.

I wondered if things would have turned out differently if I’d kept my eye on him. If I hadn’t left him alone. Would he have stayed out of the pond? Would he have still been with us? Or maybe he was better off in Vermont. That’s what I’d convinced myself. That maybe his plunge was a baptism of sorts, a rebirth. I imaged that the water and algae would keep his skin slick so that Life couldn’t get a hold of him. So it couldn’t catch him. Couldn't swallow him whole.


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Steve Karas lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter. His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Bartleby Snopes, Xenith, ken*again, Foliate Oak, and Little Fiction. You can visit his website at stevekaras.wordpress.com

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Author: Steve Karas

Contributor: Jack Caseros

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ON BEHALF OF EVERY WRITER

WHO HAS TAKEN INSPIRATION FROM A LIVING MUSE

I hope everybody knows that this was never personal.

Look, nobody likes having their lives retold from another perspective, especially one that is chilling and removed; nobody likes being made out to look like an anti-hero, especially when everybody else is cast the same way. I know you fucking hated everytime I made a character that sounded like you. But I hope you know, it was never you.

How could I imitate or even try to recreate those I love and care about? Is there any reason? Why would I attempt to remould you, when I am well aware that re-creation is perversion. I would never threaten your sanctity to me.

And that is because I believe in the holiness of coincidence—the universal karmic meddling that places you and I in the same space and same time, which may form a relationship, and, if persistent, a bond. Look, you mean more to me than literature. If I ever crossed your path, I have recognized you as a fragment of the Absolute.

Just like when Conan O’Brien pointed you out for an Audiencey, and you pouted on camera, not even laughing once. You mouthed the words ‘not cool’, and he only made fun of you for saying it. Really. Stop taking fiction so fucking seriously. You’re going to give yourself an ulcer.

And take it from a man with a tapeworm. A kink in your digestive tract is no light joke.

And what about you? Do you think I never checked your Myspace page? You think I never saw your tribute to our time together? The song, the photos, the quotes and all. You had them all on display, for strangers. You were poised, too. You meant everything you said for those other people. But what about me? Do you know why I say anything at all?

Look, I know speech is useless. Communication is ninety percent farce and nine percent lying. So why do I inscribe all my bottled thoughts on paper?

Maybe because I don’t want to remember all the hours I spent awake throughout a night, uttering epiphanies into my bedsheets—

Maybe because I don’t want to brood over all the things I never said—

Maybe I don’t want to die without anybody knowing what my life meant, even if that body isn’t me—

Maybe I want you to read my thoughts louder than I could ever screech it at the top of my lungs with my mouth pressed up against your ear—

And for all those utterly uncontrollable reasons, I spill my gluttonous memory onto the blank page.

So you see, it’s not about me, or you, it’s about the Voice. It speaks on its own. I don’t make it up. It’s not me. What? I can’t be crazy. I am too normal to be crazy. Please. Believe me.

Look. The story is about a girl who meets a guy, and doesn’t turn out to be what she is. Isn’t that any relationships? It’s a general observation, a window unto life—you remember, how I always say art is a mirror—well this is one of those time—the observations are only the shiny surface of a deep lake. You know what I mean?

Wait. Let me finish—

ON BEHALF OF EVERY PERSON WHO HAS APPEARED,

IN PART OR IN FULL,

AS A CHARACTER IN A PIECE OF LITERATURE

Who the fuck do you think you are?

You come into my face, and tell me that I’m no better than a fucking rose, or a star, or some weird poetic shit?

Look. Look. Look. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

I want you to hear me ‘On Behalf of Every Person Who Has Ever Taken a Person…they’ve loved for granted’. You insult me by claiming that  I can be simplified to some weird, ugly character. You make me sound so two-sided, like I have no third—or fourth!—dimension. Do you think I just roll out of bed to meet you with a smile? Am I here to serve you complaceny, like, a passing handshake?

Is that what you want? I can jerk you off, but it’d be much easier if I just have to shake your hand.

Alright, well, stop being so fucking stupid. All I hear are excuses. You’re making up your whole argument as you go, aren’t you? If you probably don’t mean anything when you write, then you definitely don’t mean anything when you’re apologizing to me. How can I ever believe you?

Why would I? Take your shit and leave. Flush out! Get out, piece of shit! Want to write a story? Write one about a innocent girl who kicks you out for transforming her into a bitch. Grab your stuff and go.

Leave. I’ve read the story already. It’s very touching. It made me cry, so you know what? I’m prepared. I’m ready for anything. You have nothing more to say to me. Go and speak to your blank pages and your stupid fantasy worlds. Go finger-fuck your keyboard. Give it all your lazy ass lust.

Wait. Where are you—


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Jack Caseros is a writer and ecologist from Mississauga, Ontario. His first novel, Onwards & Outwards, is available as an e-book.

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Author: Jack Caseros

Contributor: Amin Hosseinioun

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Her blanket slipped down as she raised herself from the bed. He was outside again; sitting on a branch on the old oak; staring at her through the window. He was the Crow. She cried out and covered her nakedness. They stared at each other for several minutes. "What of it" she thought, "it is only a crow". Throwing off her blankets she walked from the room naked, under the crow's fixed gaze which she felt even through the walls. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural.

In the classroom, words on the blackboard were out of focus. She could feel his eyes roaming over her body. Glancing outside she screamed in surprise: he was there again, sitting in an oak tree, staring at her.

From that day on, things grew more different by day. Now she walked with her hair around her neck and her high heels giving her a sexier shape. Finally on a day like any other, as she was removing her blouse to take her shower, she saw him again, his face covering an entire wall, his eyes as big as her head. She backed away, her hands faltering as they reached for the door.

For a while she resisted, finally she shed her blouse with shaking hands, naked legs propelling her under the dashing warmth of falling water, and the crow observing her fingers as they worked her neck and chest.

Without drying herself she made her way to her room, head lowered. He was waiting in the window frame. Opening the window, she knelt down and shut her eyes and kissed his beak. Bones in her fingers stood out, her lips were merging into his black beak. As she pulled back, her lips stretched out. She struck at him in fright, but her arms now were covered with feathers, spreading into wings. Soon she perched in the window frame, a small crow.


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I am a published writer in Farsi, in Iran, I have published two gothic novellas and many essays on literature and other narrative forms. you can read my other publication here: http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/04/letter-of-grind.html

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Author: Amin Hosseinioun

Contributor: Alun Williams

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The old man who worked on the fourteenth floor had no name. I guess his mother gave him one, but that was some time ago and no one knew what it was or what he did.
We all had our jobs, our little compartments and we all had name tags too, just so we didn’t forget, except for the old guy. He didn’t have an office of his own, not that we knew about. We couldn’t ever find out where he worked, except that we knew it was on the fourteenth floor. Once, we put a chalk cross on every door on the floor and wrote the names of all the staff who worked there. He didn’t work in any of them but each morning he arrived, disappeared down the corridor and reappeared when it was time for lunch.
Harvey Goldblum followed him one time. He came back and said that the old guy, we called him Arthur, went to the third bench on the Bethesda Terrace, folded his jacket and lay down and slept for thirty four minutes before returning to his non-existent office and his non-existent job. Each of us took turns following him after that. Arthur followed exactly the same routine every lunch break and seemed to sleep through the noise of the city for exactly thirty four minutes. When it was my turn to follow him, I watched him fall asleep and wished that I too could sleep as easily and as well as he did. He seemed to reach a peak of total calm. I hated him for that.
No one at the office wanted to confront him. Administration thought it was the responsibility of human resources, who in turn thought it was payroll’s responsibility. Payroll said security were the ones who should handle it, but they felt that without any evidence to back up any action, they might be sued, so they sent a memo to all departments asking for a list of all employees’ names and security id numbers. They thought that by eliminating names to numbers they could find out who the mysterious old guy was. Unfortunately they found another sixteen members of staff who weren’t supposed to work there and all hell broke loose!
They never did find out his secret. Arthur continued to come in every day and carried on taking a thirty four minute nap on his lunch break. We decided to let him continue. Confrontation is not one of the main attributes of a data processor’s functions and one day we thought, if we live long enough and beat the boredom, we could all sleep like Arthur.


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Alun Williams resides in Wales and is no relation to either Tom or Catherine Zeta Douglas. Writer of Flash fiction and poetry he resides as maxieslim and maxwell allen on sites such as Critters-bar and Scrawl. Published in Yellow Mama, Pure Slush and Palehouse to name but a few. Loves noir and Charles Bukowski.

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Author: Alun Williams

Contributor: Erin Cole

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Claire popped her joints into the corner of the wall and became amber doorframe. Three children charged down the hallway, shrieking with ear-splitting rumpus. The eldest, Sam, tripped over a spot he couldn’t identify. He scratched his head in wonderment, then resumed to the fake beheading of his twin sisters’ by the dull glint of a plastic, pirate sword.

Only when they were gone, did Claire wring her shoulders from the molding and continue searching Sam’s room, specifically looking for evidence that he had been shifting. A number of peculiar happenings threatened to confirm her hunch: the stereo clicked on by itself, skipping through tunes like a scratched record. The front door slammed on its own, not a breeze in sight, and the lights intermittently. New house, new bulbs.

If he had been shifting, flakes of skin would dust the floor around the objects he had shifted into, one of the side effects of chemical alteration. Claire didn’t think he would be of mind yet to hide it.

But Sam was only eight, much too young to start shifting. Regardless of age, shifters had to sign contracts, be initiated, undergo training … it was a thorough, tedious process with the Others, that if skipped, resulted in fines and/or imprisonment.

Claire rummaged through tubs of ‘boy stuff’ also know as ‘what the hell is this?’ stuff. After an excess of crude discoveries, she sat down on his bed defeated, but still ripe with suspicion. The blanket beneath her moved and transformed into her husband’s groping hand.

“Dammit Jack. Stop that!”

The blanket curled up, becoming his head, torso, and legs. A giggle reddened his shifting face. “Works every time,” he beamed, sitting down human again.

Claire flicked his skin flakes away with the back of her hand and turned pinched brows to him. “This is serious. Sam is only eight, and I think he’s shifting already. Last week, Evette’s daughter, Lynn, you know, the little girl with the hot-pink braces smile?” She paused, if only for a vague nod from Jack before continuing. “Turns out, she shifted into the microphone before her brother’s performance. I heard it was awful and obvious to the Others. They fined the family $1000, and no one has heard from the mother since. She just up and disappeared.”

“She probably shifted into a boat and sailed away.”

“Patty? She’d never do a thing like that.” Claire noticed Jack lift his face aside, in a way that seemed to conceal the expression of a secret thought. “Spill it or by the dark side of the moon, I’ll shift into the unthinkable.” Her eyes drilled him with equal threat.

He stalled, seemingly teetering on a decision, and then pulled a card from his shirt pocket. He handed it to her.

Shape Shifters Anonymous: we bend into objects, so why not rules? “Oh, Jack. Say you didn’t?”

His mouth bent into a smirk, then he slipped into the lamp next to him. The cord tugged on itself and suspended Claire in darkness.

“Aaaagghh!”

She shot up from the bed, made contact with the ceiling, and melted into it like a snake gliding into water. The house shook side to side. It shuddered, knocking pictures from the wall and books off the shelves. The lights flashed, cutting everyone’s movement into a robotic stride.

Jack shifted back into human and followed his children’s hollers into the kitchen.

“Dad!” the twins yelled. “It’s an earthquake!”

“No,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Your mother is … home.”


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Erin Cole is a dark fiction writer from Portland, OR with work published in various electronic and print publications. Last year, her story, “The Wall of Never Doubt,” won 10th place in Writer’s Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition, Genre Short Story.

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Author: Erin Cole