Contributor: Victoria Elizabeth Ann

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Palliative care.

She read it again. That couldn’t be right.

Patient is receiving palliative care. Terminal renal cancer. Metastasized. Lymphatic system.

The words jumped off of the page. Her father’s cancer was far worse than he had admitted. He had entered the final moments of his life and it was a surprise.

Last winter, he called her at the start of her final semester in college. He let her know of the diagnosis, assuring her that they had caught it early, it could be easily treated, and that she shouldn’t worry about him. Focus on her life. Enjoy her last few months before the “real world” roared into focus.

“Michelle,” he had chastised her, “This is the spring of your life. Everything is open and blossoming for you. Don’t waste it worrying about me. Enjoy the last bloom of your adolescence – it goes so fast.”

And so she did. Parties, classes, the beach. All spring, all summer; she lived for herself. Stopping home to visit only every few weeks. Calling her father to complain about her problems. Boys, teachers, shoes. A solstice of triviality that only immaturity can permit.

And now here they were. Ten months later. The feathery petals of the dogwood trees were falling outside the window of the sterile room. Was it October already? Had autumn, with its promise of cold, bleak days to come, filled her world with its ominous presence again? How did it sneak up on her so fast?

Her father, lying in the hospital bed, an IV filled with morphine going drip, drip, drip. Her, a diploma on the wall, real life going knock, knock, knock.

Why didn’t he tell her the truth? How much differently she would have lived! Winter, spring, summer, and fall – she would have given them all to him. Weekly visits, heartfelt conversations, a semester off from school. What’s one more season? Graduation could have waited.

A completely dissimilar existence she would have spent. The guilt of selfishness, the superficiality of youth – they weighed down on her as she watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

She pulled a CD player out of her book bag and placed it on his bedside table. The CD was old, scratched. She hoped it would play.

“Let me tell you a secret, about a father’s love. A secret that my daddy said was just between us. Now daddies don’t just love their children every now and then. It’s a love without end, amen.”

Their song. His promise. Her life.

She watched the bluest summer sky in his eyes, his hand held tightly in hers, as the time between the beeps on the monitor grew longer. Longer. Stopped. His chest didn’t rise again.

The hibernation of her youth had started. In the spring, she would be reborn again, an adult. The real world would blossom in front of her, offering with it the sweet petals of opportunity, of challenge, of pain, of joy. But for now? Now, it was her winter.


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Victoria Elizabeth Ann is a lifetime student of the arts, literature, and life as a whole. She is currently studying Creative Writing at Full Sail University and aspires to publish a novel in the near future.

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Author: Victoria Elizabeth Ann

Contributor: Pranas Perkunas

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For lunch I strolled over to the Reality Café. It was a clean-looking, red brick building in a friendly enough neighborhood, so I was a little surprised to see only a few patrons there, especially after I got a gander at the menu; my eyes lingered long on the items advertised with bold, colorful letters or written in fancy fonts: TRUE LOVE, HARD WORK=SUCCESS, GOOD KARMA FOR GOOD PEOPLE, IF IT’s ON TV IT’s TRUE, etc. And the prices were so reasonable! I shook my hoary head with smiling disbelief.

“Herow, may I hep you?” I looked up from my menu to see an astonishingly lovely waitress of the Asian kind, rockin’ that famous jet-black hair cut straight across her forehead and sporting lips like first-prize cherry blossoms.

“I bet you have a lot of Facebook friends,” I said.

“They shut my account down—so stupid—just ‘cuz that’s where I met my last boyfriend,”

she said, speaking now in an entirely Midwestern American accent.

“Who was your last guy?”

“The Pope,” she said with a giggle while kicking up one of her sparkly, pink heels with a dolphin sticker on it until it smacked up against the back of her matching shorts.

“What happened to your charming accent?” I asked.

“Don’t stereotype,” she said. I looked back down at the menu.

“I was considering ordering the TRUE LOVE,” I said, “but can this price be RIGHT?”

“Yup: Honesty, Sincerity, and just being Yourself.”


“Then I’ll take it!” I exclaimed, my hopeful heart leaping like a baby dolphin.

She calculated the going rate for honesty and sincerity on her Domo cell phone: twenty-one cents: American. I cheerfully handed her exactly that, and when I held out and glanced at her twenty dollar tip in my hand, I saw that President Jackson was now finally combing his wild, rock star hair, the old lecher.

The waitress giggled, kicked up her other heel and pranced back into the kitchen. My reverie was rudely thumped when something not-at-all plushy landed on my head. It was a sparkly, pink, high-heel shoe with a dolphin sticker on the heel. I took it as an omen—a good one. O how my heart jumped like a hormonal, teenaged dolphin!

While my eyes were busy glazing over with vanilla-frosted longing, I was rudely interrupted by a hard finger poke right between my shoulder blades. The digit belonged to Ms. Blevins, a co-worker who looked a lot Big Bird might without the yellow costume. My heart plunged like a dolphin tossed from an imagined heaven into an oil spill of epic proportions. From her altitudinous height, to her angular frame and sharp, hawk-like facial features, Ms. Blevins was the antithesis of one who could quench my hells.

I felt almost as badly for her as for myself, but I couldn’t conjure up attraction for her anymore than I could blame her for repeatedly inviting me to “see her jacuzzi” or take her “out for cocktails.”

“HI MR.G!” she screeched with her wrecking-ball of a voice. Then she smiled until her face crinkled like a contour map hastily shoved in a glove compartment since 1974. I bristled with horror as her scaly toe sandpapered up my shin.

“WAITRESS! WAITRESS! I demand to see the MANAGER!” I cried while getting up from my seat and gesticulating like a seventh-grade English teacher. The same waitress from before emerged looking risquely disheveled, and so did the manager next to her. His face was old and severe, and he had a long snow-white beard. (This was no Podunk manager.)

“Sir, I believe I ordered True Love,” I said trying to strain the sarcasm from my tone.

Old Snow Beard guffawed as he held his quivering belly in his hands. I recognized him then as the HEAD, head manager—of everything—if you catch my drift.

The waitress kept her professional cool even as a tiny, upright reptile struggled to topple the already shaken stay-calm tower in my toy brain.

“THIS isn’t what I ordered,” I said as Ms. Blevins ran her bony hand through my spray-on hair. The manager smirked as he warmed the waitresses’ bottom.

“Oh, I see,” he said, “WHOM did you have in mind?” he continued in a voice that was bellowing and seemed to echo from some deep cavern. Funny thing though: his lips weren’t moving.

“You KNOW well, SIR,” I said looking him dead in one of the eyes which had sprouted all over his face and body. Ms. Blevins excused herself to the “little girls’ room” after showing me the E=mc(2) tattoo on her unmentionable. The manager goosed the waitress, and the eye on his palm laughed as he pulled it away.

“Look, BUB, if you want a shot at one of my FINEST, you strolled into the wrong café, but you’re INVITED to my place across the street,” he said.

“Your OTHER place?” I said.

“They’re ALL my places, son,” he stated while pointing out the window, as a bead of sweat--or something--dripped from his finger. I bolted out of there because I had no intention of paying the bill. Once safely outside, I saw a line of people snaking halfway down the block. I made it longer.

“Where’s it we’re all waiting to go?” I asked the sad-looking rodeo clown in front of me.

“You know where,” he said in a monotone and without even looking my way.

After an hour or so of the line inching forward, I could finally read the sign in the distance:

DELUSION DINER. I have to say, they have the best menu in town, though the prices are higher than anyone suspects. Just the same, I’ve been eating there ever since.

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Pranas Perkunas (pen name) rejects everything you probably believe in. He fervently hopes that a new reality exists somewhere or sometime which is not predicated upon the premise of a food chain. If this is the only current reality, then God created surrealists as a kind of collective think tank.

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Author: Pranas Perkunas

Contributor: Sean Crose

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We drove on, past the marshlands and amateur photographers, past the pavilions and dog walkers and made our way to the end of the park. It was a bright, warm day in early May.
Stepping out of the Chevy, we tossed our Dunkin Donuts cups in the public trash can and looked around. Couples, young and old, were scattered about, along with shirtless stoners and fishermen.
The most striking thing about the park, though, was the silence.
“Quiet,” Tara whispered as we headed toward the trail.
I nodded my head.
“Sometimes there's nothing louder than silence.”
We worked our way up to a set of wooden steps that led to a rocky hill overlooking the water. It was steeper than I had remembered.
“What's keeping you? I'm already at the top.”
“Gimme a minute,” I said. “I'm getting there.”
It was still quiet at the top of the rocky hill. From where we stood we could see the beaches and pavilions to the right and a lone sailboat far off in the water, to the left. Tara pointed to the stone pier that jutted out from the nearest beach.
“Look at those fishermen out on that pier. Think they'll catch anything?”
“Probably. Sea Robbins, at least.”
“What are Sea Robbins?”
“The kind of fish you don't want to catch.”
“What kind of fish do you want to catch?”
“Around here? Blues mostly. Blues and snappers.”
I looked out at the fishermen on the pier. They were probably using Bunker and Mackerel as bait. Frozen, of course. The salt water would melt the ice away in minutes, if not seconds.
“What are you thinking about?”
I shrugged.
“Surf casting.”
“Surf casting?”
I pointed out to the pier.
“What they're doing out there.”
“Why do they call it surf casting?”
“I dunno.”
“You used to do that, didn't you?” she asked. “Surf cast, I mean.”
“Sure did,” I nodded. “A long time ago.”
I turned away from the pier.
“Too long ago,” I added.
“What's that?”
“I said I should start surf casting again.”
“There's a lot of things you should start doing again.”
She was looking right at me.
“Life gets in the way.”
“Yeah. If you let it.”
I squinted out at the sailboat. It was far away by this time.
“Look at that sailboat,” I said. “All by itself out there without a care in the world.”
The silence was further broken by the sounds of two stoners making their way up the rocky hill from the opposite direction. They seemed surprised to see us, why I don't know. Maybe they thought they'd be all by themselves on top of that rocky hill, all by themselves without a care in the world.
They stood there for a moment, the two stoners and looked out at the fishermen on the pier before moving on.
“That was fast,” Tara laughed.
“I think they wanted to get going once they found out we were here.”
“They were probably just looking for a place to smoke.”
I nodded my head in agreement.
“Ready to move on?” she asked.


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My name is Sean Crose. I'm a writer of fiction, non-fiction, scripts and poetry (although fiction is where my heart and soul is). I live in Connecticut with my wife Jen, and Cody, the world's greatest cat.

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Author: Sean Crose

Contributor: Jeff Suwak

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Several dozen little people lived inside Marcia’s head. At night while Marcia slept they crawled out of her ears to talk to me. Their appearance was initially disturbing, but I came to enjoy their company.
Marcia was an angry and abusive person. She often mocked me and said I was stupid, lazy, and pathetic. So it was that I laughed when the little people told me they had been poisoning Marcia for years–not enough to kill her, but just enough to make her feel sick and rundown.
One night the little people invited me to meet their queen. They gave me a thimble full of elixir that turned me into a little person, and I followed them into the dark complex of caves inside Marcia’s head.
The queen lived in a chamber in the heart of the caves. Inside the chamber was a well, and at the bottom of the well lived a little girl. All day long the queen shouted insults at the girl in the well. That was how she poisoned Marcia, for the girl at the well bottom was actually a little version of Marcia. Anything that the little version of Marcia felt, the big version felt, as well.
The queen launched derisions into the well. “Quit crying,” she hissed. “Fat, ugly, stupid girl.” She sneered in malicious joy as the little girl sobbed in the darkness.
The queen wanted me to poison Marcia’s body, just as she and the little people were poisoning Marcia’s mind. “Together we could make Marcia soooo sick,” the queen crooned with laughter. She promised me that the little people would visit me every night if I poisoned Marcia, and I would never be lonely again.
I went for a walk in the caves to think. I did not want to poison Marcia or anybody else, but the little people were my only friends, and I did not want to lose their companionship.
Running water echoed from the depths of the caves. I followed the sound until I reached a chamber in which a waterfall cascaded down a rocky wall. A movie played on the waterfall like a liquid television screen. The characters in the movie were all the little people from Marcia’s head. I realized as I watched that the movie was Marcia’s memories, and the characters were all the people that had mistreated her in her life. The queen was in the movie more than anyone else. The queen was Marcia’s mother.
Suddenly understanding that Marcia was so mean and abusive because of the little people poisoning her mind, I ran back to the queen’s chamber in rage. The little people tried to stop me, but I fought through them with ease. It turned out that they only appeared to be strong, and were actually quite weak.
I threw the queen outside the chamber and swore to kill her if she returned. I told the little Marcia at the bottom of the well that the queen was a liar. “You are beautiful,” I said. The little girl stopped crying. In time, she climbed out of the well into the chamber.
The queen ran in shrieking and clawed at little Marcia’s eyes. The little girl, realizing how powerful she was now that she was finally free of her prison, grabbed the queen by the neck and tossed her down into the well. The little people, awed by the girl’s strength, bowed in sublimation.
Marcia ordered the little people to dig a tunnel out of the caves into the sunlight above. She declared herself the new queen and vowed that her rule would be brighter than her predecessor’s. She thanked me, we embraced, and I left her to her new life.
I never returned to Marcia’s head after that night, but I still see the little girl that climbed out of the well every day. I see her every time that Marcia laughs, and every time that Marcia is kind to someone. Marcia does both of those things often, now. She does those things so often, in fact, that I often forget that there was ever a time when she did not do those things. It turns out that all she needed was for someone to silence the little people inside her head and to set her inner child free.


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Jeff is a writer and editor living in the Pacific Northwest.

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Author: Jeff Suwak

Contributor: John Laneri

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Most Saturday mornings, I bypass the town cafe and head straight for breakfast at Aunt Jillie's Boarding House. It's a large Victorian known throughout Texas as the finest establishment in Neverton, a small community along the cattle trail to Fort Worth.

Once there, I always eat breakfast with Jillie, my best friend. She's an good looking, fun loving woman that folks call, 'Aunt Jillie'.

That day though, Lucinda, Jillie’s maid, stopped me in the foyer of her house, whispering, “Miss Jillie's too busy for pancakes.”

Surprised, I replied, “But, she always eats a stack of your pancakes on Saturdays… says it’s her favorite.”

“She's too flustered to eat,” Lucinda said. “All she’s been doing is flying around like a whirlwind. I’ve never seen her in such an excitement.”

Hearing a flurry of activity coming from the parlor, I turned about to see what the commotion was all about.

“Why Sheriff Carson!” Jillie said, in a startled voice. “You surprised me.” She paused to wipe the moisture from her cheeks then continued, “I've had a busy morning... got up at five o'clock.”

While Jillie was usually well groomed and fashionable, today a scarf covered her hair and a man’s shirt with long tails hung to her knees.

“You’re lookin' mighty casual this morning.”

She pecked my cheek with a kiss. “Lets have coffee. I'll tell you all about it.”

With my stomach growling for pancakes, I followed her through the dining room, toward the back of the house where we settled across from one another at a kitchen table.

“Why so busy?” I asked, as I poured some coffee.

“I’m getting the house ready for the Senator,” she replied, smiling brightly.

In the background, I noticed the aroma of a pot roast slowly cooking. Savoring the smell, I went on to say, “I take it, you’re referring to that fellow passin' through from the state capitol.”

“Can you imagine, a real senator staying at my house. There’s so much work to do.”

“You seem to be going to lots trouble just to please a senator.”

“If I treat him right, he’ll go back to the capitol and spread the word that my house is the finest in Texas.”

“Your house already is the finest in Texas.”

“But, I want the important people with lots of money to know that too.” She touched my arm. “He’s promised to pay me one hundred dollars.”

“One hundred dollars,” I said, surprised. “That’s a powerful amount of money for one of your girls.”

“He wants me,” she replied, happily. “I’m getting’ one hundred dollars for a night of pleasure as well as a pot roast dinner and a splash in my new bathtub.”

It took me a few moments to sort through her words. Finally, I said, “What I don’t understand is, how you plan to satisfy both the senator and me at eleven o’clock – our usual Saturday time.”

She removed the scarf from her hair and began adjusting several knots of ribbon hidden underneath. They were the kind women use to tie the hair into little balls close to the head. It's a grooming technique that most fellows know give ladies a terrible look.

Smiling, she continued. “I didn’t think you’d mind postponing our Saturday night, knowing it’s for one hundred dollars.”

While I generally enjoy the rich texture and reddish highlights in her hair, the curlers distracted from that pleasure. Forcing a smile, I asked, “What about that girl from Abilene, the one with the blue eyes. She gets fellows plenty excited.”

Jillie paused to adjust another curler. “She's too skinny for a distinguished gentleman, and besides, she likes to use spurs... can I get you a coffee refill?”

I rubbed my belly, my eyes still directed to the curlers. “I’ve had enough coffee. Some things tend to upset my insides something awful.”

Finally, she replaced the scarf saying, “I hope you’ll come by the house tonight and visit with the Senator.”

“I doubt the Senator will be much interested in me,” I replied, as I reached for my hat. “Actually, I'm thinkin’ of playin’ poker with some of the boys at the saloon. I need to win some money... seems my pocketbook is getting mighty thin. I'll need at least another twenty dollars so as not to go hungry before the end of the month.”

“Your official presence would make the house more comfortable for the Senator. You know how often fellows get out of hand when they get liquored.”

“One of my deputies can check by every hour or so.”

“Your official presence would mean so much to me,” she said, as her bare foot began creeping playfully up my leg. “What time can I expect you tonight?” she asked, her voice purring sweetly.

Setting the foot aside, I came to my feet saying, “I need to get going. Some of the boys are already tossin' horseshoes over by the livery stable. I might just win a few extra bucks to carry me over.”

In desperation, she finally said, “Would twenty dollars be enough money to buy your official presence?”

Laughing to myself, confident that a little deception works like magic, I stuffed the twenty into my pocket and headed for the door, knowing that if I played my hand right, the Senator would end up getting spurred, and I'd get Jillie as well as a splash in her bathtub and generous portion of pot roast for my evening meal.


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John is a native born Texan living near Houston. His writing focuses on short stories and flash. Publications to his credit have appeared in several scientific journals as well as on a number of internet sites and in short story periodicals.

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Author: John Laneri

Contributor: Robert Srange

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Seventeen-year-old Christine Anderson had been missing for twelve years and eleven months. No ransom note had ever been sent and no body had been recovered.
The police and the FBI had searched under every rock, in every place they could think of to look, but had given up the search. Her mother and father had given up hope of ever seeing her alive again and closure is what they sought most desperately. Just to know what had happened would have been a release. But no news ever arrived. No call had ever been received. They sat silently and waited, staring at the walls, together.

Dorothy Mae Swanson was a quiet girl. She was the kind that enjoyed serene meadows and babbling brooks. She also loved poetry books and every month, when a new volume of prose arrived she would find a quiet place and read.
She had been going to an old cemetery that overlooked the river near her home to read her books for some time and she particularly enjoyed the silence of the headstones. It wasn’t a morbid feeling; it just made her calm and able to immerse herself in each poem, after all she felt something compelling amongst the tombs, something reassuring.
One afternoon she felt drawn to explore the garden at the center of the mausoleums. It was a peaceful, well-manicured garden with benches and a park like setting. The garden seemed to bring her pleasure and she delighted in returning day after day.
This went on for some time and it began to take a toll on her. Her mother asked if she was feeling all right, but she just shrugged it off and smiled as she left for her daily walk in the garden.
It had been almost a month since she began to sit in the garden, when she heard a voice. It started out small but it began to grow louder and louder. It was a beautiful voice she thought and it brought her peace. She began to listen to the voice closely. It seemed to come from all directions at once. But sounded so beautiful, so lovely.
The voice began to call to her. It called her to an old gate that closed the entrance to a tomb, a very old tomb. As she reached out for the gate it began to move and opened on its own. Normally this would have frightened her, but the voice was so soothing so beautiful and it beckoned her to enter the dark room beyond.
Within her heart she began to scream but nothing came out. It seemed as if her throat was frozen, but the soothing voice called to her, its lullaby and harmony was so enchanting, so irresistible. She screamed with horror deep within herself, but her feet kept moving forward as if they moved of their own will and not hers.
Within the dark chamber of the tomb there appeared another door. It seemed to have been painted shut with rust and corrosion. “No one could open such a door” she thought within her subconscious mind and it made her heart leap to think she could go no further. But the door began to open; its rust and corrosion fell to the floor as the door began to open with a loud and terrible sound.
Her mortal soul was fighting and kicking, she howled with fear within herself, but the voice continued to call and her body listened. So calming, so lovely.
The doorway opened to a spiral staircase, its walls narrow and confining. She continued down into a room that held a sarcophagus its lid had slid partly open and revealed its contents.
In the scant light that fell from the open door above she could see a mans body stretched out in eternal sleep, his hands and face uncovered, he looked as if he was made of marble and his body was shrouded by a thin veil of cobwebs. The ghastly scene was almost more than her struggling mind could accept.
Against her will she moved to the sarcophagus and peered within. For a second she stood in abject terror peering into the dark tomb. Then suddenly to her horror the corpse moved, it shifted slightly and then its arms reached forward and drew her into the stone box. As she caught one last, fleeting glimpse of the room, she could see in the dim glow, skeletons and corpses desiccated and scattered all about the room and volumes of poetry, dusty and falling apart lying everywhere. The lid slowly closed behind her with a scratching, hollow sound that echoed through the chamber.

Lt. Gill was a detective. He had been hired to investigate the disappearance of Dorothy Mae Swanson by her parents, hoping he could find something to lead them to her.
He was exhausted, he had followed every lead and tracked down every detail possible, it had led him nowhere. He was about to give up when the phone rang. It was the gardener at the cemetery on the hill. The old gardener insisted that he meet him in the garden at the center of the mausoleums.
Arriving at the garden he found an elderly man standing near a locked gate. He was holding a small book of poetry, his hands shaky with age. He said that he had found it lying next to a tomb entrance and that it was an important clue to the disappearances.
Lt. Gill took the old book from the old mans weathered hands. It was in very bad shape from lying in the ferns and garden soil and it was certainly found in an odd place.
He opened its brittle cover and on it’s inside leaf, barely legible, the name, Christine Anderson.


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I have been writing fiction and short stories since college.
I'm currently writing all kinds of short stories.

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Author: Robert Srange

Contributor: Hannah Garrard

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I followed the woman’s head nodding forward as she teetered on the brink of sleep. Her hair fell about her face and her jaw slackened. On her lap she clutched a designer handbag and a cake in a box with a clear lid, through which I could just make out some birthday text amongst the whipped cream.

That cake won’t make it home in one piece, I said to myself. I was suddenly struck by a stab of Schadenfreude, triggered perhaps by the expensive handbag.

It wasn’t difficult to spot the haircut to my left, because it belonged to a man a clear head above the rest of the crowd- squashed against the doors of the rumbling carriage. But the haircut was just the beginning: Armani sunglasses flashed reflected neon as the train sped past LED advertisements. I surreptitiously followed the angular lines which began at his crown and led to his muscular body, scantily clad in black mesh. Next, came white Lycra leggings that had every intention of turning strangers crimson. Finally, at the bottom amongst a mob of scuffed loafers, stood luminous green sling-back trainers. He looked amazing, like a futuristic Mardi Gras. I looked down at my own white t-shirt, splattered orange with ramyen from that day’s lunch.

The designer handbag emptied itself onto the floor of the carriage, followed by the cream cake. The woman woke up with a jolt and Happy Birthday was ruined.


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Hannah is from the UK but now lives in South Korea amongst the neon signage. From her apartment she can see the ocean, and a rusty cruise ship that makes tired laps around the peninsular. You can follow her travels and her writing at: www.lookingformyhat.blogspot.com

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Author: Hannah Garrard

Contributor: Gary Clifton

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She was female and appeared young, burn damage too severe to really tell. "Tied to that bed, McCoy," the Medical Examiner bent over the carnage. "The autopsy will tell more."
"They's been a man comin' up there nights...when her roommate is away at work," the apartment manager worked on a tall boy and a menthol filter tip at 3:00 A.M.
"Tonight?" McCoy asked. It was his turn in the barrel for Homicide deep night call-outs. He'd handle the preliminaries and begin the follow up on Monday - so he thought.
"Dunno...could be...just dunno." she exhaled smoke.
The victim's name was Lynn and she had a lover, Charlie, a bouncer at an all night, b.y.o.b. lesbian club on Fitzhugh. McCoy figured Charlie was working when her roommate had been murdered by the man the manager had mentioned, so he delivered the tragic news alone. Then he'd crawl back in bed.
The alleyway was pitch black. McCoy was used to dark alleys. Charlie, a dumpy little number in black Doc Marten's, had a silver chain hanging from her belt. Flash of a badge and a quick word normally would have salved the way to a very sad meeting. Instead, Charlie clipped his chin with an overhand right. "Gonna kick your ass, sumbitch," she spat. When she yanked on her belt chain, out came a mace.
He grabbed Charlie's shirt and tossed her headfirst onto the sidewalk, then quick-stepped down and kicked her in the ribs. Yeah, the book said don't slap women around, but this was a little different.
A second bouncer landed on McCoy's back, grappling for a choke hold. He slid away and Charlie's helper landed hard on the pavement. Four more appeared in the doorway. Time to give a little ground...consider pulling a pistol.
Then, behind him, three more figures blocked the street. One was African American and big. Two and three were smaller, white and waved those metal flashlight-clubs. "What the hell's goin' on?" the African American stepped forward.
"Just conferring with Charlie here," McCoy waved his badge.
The African American turned to the doorway. "Police business, ladies, everybody back inside!" Distant streetlight twinkled off the badge on his chest.
"Why no call for backup?" one officer asked.
"Good question." McCoy pulled handcuffs. "I came with tragic news, but I'm afraid Charlie just shot off her foot. Charlie, you're under arrest...murder. Dunno why the hell you didn't just disappear."
"Lynn...my little Lynn was cheating...with a man, for Christ's sake. She said she'd love me forever," Charlie sobbed on the sidewalk.
"You still coulda just split," McCoy shook his head. His mind morphed to notifying next of kin. Suddenly he felt very old and bone tired. No sleep tonight.


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Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, published a novel in national paperback and has published or has pending articles in several online magazine sites

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: Chris Sharp

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He had an unusual first name, “Stave,” which was at first explained was given as a gift by his parents to make him feel more unique. Later he learned “Stave” was a compromise between his father who preferred “Dave” and his mother who wanted to name him “Steve.”
Stave stood outside his apartment door that day, locked out again. Sometimes he thought that if his name were either “Dave” or “Steve” he would have been saved from so many absurd situations in addition to being locked out. He also recognized that a man named “Stave” was somewhat like a clown named “Bozo,” which guaranteed many kinds of funny encounters. But since Stave was an only child, he kept his name going strong to honor his parents.
While he stood at his locked door, waiting for something better to happen, his neighbor Scott whose life was always as normal as his name asked:
“Did you lose your keys again, Stave?”
“They sneaked away from me, when I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Oh no.”
“I guess it just won’t let up,” said Stave, spitting on a clump of grass.
He had finally started to think of his keychain by the pronoun “she” because of the personal way the keys ran away and hid from him. He confirmed he would never marry anytime soon, if even a lifeless thing like a keychain couldn’t resist abandoning him in a time of need.
One thing was in his favor that day. Like most of his fellow workers that he knew, Stave had to keep taking days off and stay under a 40-hour work week to keep his corporate owner from giving him medical benefits. On this latest day of loss, he had the whole day to retrieve the keychain at the two neighboring places where he had just wandered.
“I used the toilet here this morning, so my keychain might have bailed out on your bathroom floor,” he told the outlet store manager from the place he had checked out for earphone sales.
The manager shook her head even before she poked through the drawers at the point-of-sale. She shook her head harder when nothing turned up.
The other place Stave had been was a Mexican restaurant where he stopped for a breakfast as a reward for another day he had had taken off.
“It’s a sneaky keychain,” he told the young Latino man at the counter. “I lose her a lot, and she hides in the cleverest places. It’s like she wants nothing to do with me, like I’m too ugly for her or I’m too dumb for her.”
When the young Latino man repeated “keys” he went to three far-away places to look. “No,” said Stave when he came back. The young man – who acted reluctant to say a word – shook his head.
Stave went back to his apartment and pressed his hand hard against a back window, and suddenly it slid open. When he jumped inside, he felt at least a little progress was made. The first thing he found was a duplicate car key that he had kept under his silverware.
He kicked everything around on the floor for a few minutes, and the keychain turned up. It had been laying low between a cardboard box of old newspapers and another non-descript box.
“You,” said Stave, looking at the keychain with all the life he had left. “You feel important don’t you because you made me think about you all day long. But I’m sorry. You see I’m sorry I didn’t look to see if you were with me this morning when I just closed the door and just locked out everything in the world to me.”
A few months later he went through the same episode all over again.
“Oh no,” said Scott, the neighbor who continued to look as all right as his name. “Don’t tell me the keys are lost again, Stave.”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do, Stave?”
“Look for her again.”


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Chris Sharp has several stories in the archives of Weirdyear, Yesteryear Fiction, Daily Love and Linguistic Erosion, with his short stories accumulating the most Internet hits listed under Google as “Short Stories by Chris Sharp.” His book “Dangerous Learning” is distributed by Barnes and Noble.

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Author: Chris Sharp

Contributor: Stephen V. Ramey

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February 17, 2007 began the Year of the Pig according to the Lunar New Year calendar. It was on that date that I started my quest to become Earth's fattest man. A side of bacon for breakfast, three Big Macs and triple fries for early lunch, then a plate of ribs at Zibo's an hour after that. Dinner was the immobile meal. I would routinely stuff myself so full of potatoes and pasta, with occasional salad (heavily dressed, of course) that I could not move from the sofa for hours. I began relieving myself into buckets. My wife complained, but kept cooking. I loved her more than life itself, but not more than a good steak rubbed with pepper and cooked over a low, blue flame.

February 7, 2008 brought in the Year of the Rat. I was at 390 pounds, and growing fast. I had been given permission to telecommute, and routinely did my job as a traffic analyst while chomping down bags of Doritos, Cheetos, and pork rinds. Coke was my morning drink. At noon I switched to sweetened tea, with so much sugar you could watch it precipitate out when you put the pitcher in the fridge. This was the year I began my affair with Meghan Chives. Almost every night after my wife was sleeping, blindfolded and tooth-guarded in her bed, I would squeeze through the doorway and make the laborious trek three row houses down to Meghan's. We would eat greasy chicken or meat skewered on metal. I think it was the adrenalin fear of discovery that drove me that year, though it could also have been that Meghan's cupboards were well stocked.

2009 initiated the Year of the Ox. I was over 500 pounds now, and every movement became a labor. I was dragging the world around. No surprise when the company laid me off. Times were tough, and my work had degraded. It's difficult to click when your finger is larger than the mouse button. I stopped my affair with Meghan. Lugging my heart monitor and O2 tank was not worth the reward.

2010, the Year of the Tiger. I took charge of my weight gain with a vengeance. My wife, with Meghan's encouragement, it turns out, had been working toward staging an intervention. They even arranged for a famous weight clinic to hoist me out of the apartment and put me under house arrest. There were whispers of stomach staples and liposuction. I put a stop to it. I was not about to waste three years.

2011 was the Year of the Rabbit. And it's true that I now had to forage for myself, nibbling through our pantry one shelf at a time. A difficult year, best left unrecalled. My wife was gone, and so was Meghan. I lost nearly a hundred pounds.

2012, the Year of the Dragon. I have refocused on weight gain, even as it consumes my hoard. I will soon be forced to return to my women for nurture, and I will do so without regret. It may take a week to make it down into the basement where the freezer is, but I will make it one way or another. And they will be there.

Next year begins the year of the Snake.


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Stephen V. Ramey lives in beautiful New Castle, Pennsylvania, with his novelist wife and three obstructionist cats. His work has appeared in various places, including Linguistic Erosion, Smashed Cat, A Capella Zoo, and is upcoming at Weird Tales. He edits the annual Triangulation anthology from Parsec Ink, and the speculative twitterzine, trapeze.

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Author: Stephen V. Ramey