Contributor: Matt Fleming

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All he would need to do is get back in his car and drive away. Twenty, maybe twenty-five steps and he would be able to spare himself the shame and humiliation of asking Daisy to the prom. He stood in front of the door for a long while, staring at the rusting brass knocker. He willed his hand to move, but it decided that now would be a great time to give in to fear instead of, as his dad was often fond of saying, "bellying up to the bar". He cast a quick glance behind him to the car.

It was his dad's old Ford, but in the night, with the damp southern air and being parked under one of the few working street lights around, it may as well have been 1964. It was the car his father took his mother out on their first date in. For years, it was his father's baby and his focus, even when mom would yell at him to take out the garbage or watch the kids. His dad taught him how to care for every inch of that vehicle, and he learned. He kept trying to make his dad proud. Maybe one day, he will. That car was more than a machine. It was how he escaped, even when he couldn't drive and needed to find a safe place when his father was mad or drunk and needed to blow off steam. That car was as much his home as his way to get to work and school, and if he could just get up the courage to knock on that door, it might be his turn to have a first date in it. It was good enough for his dad, so it's good enough for him.

He adjusted his suit jacket for the fifth or fifteenth time and ran his fingers through his hair with his free hand, the other clutching a bundle of roses wrapped in floral plastic and shaking slightly. Steeling himself, he willed his free hand to, again, grab the ring. This time, it relented and reached upward, slowly, straining to make contact with his destiny. His fingers stroked the single handle on the brass circle. Rust trickled down like light snow as he pulled the handle back. At the same time, the porch light flickered on.

The door shook off more rust from the knocker as it shuddered. Loud clicks and mechanical machinery emanated from the door for many long seconds. He let go quickly, it striking out a soft thud as it settled back into place. The doorknob turned, and the door opened.

"Jay? What br-" The young lady at the door inhaled sharply as she spied the well-dressed man on her parent's porch. He was handsome, in a rugged way. They were friends at school, but the most they had done up to this point was talk during class. He was definitely trying, and the roses, her favorite flower, helped immensely. It was old-fashioned, but he seemed to be an old-fashioned kind of guy.

"Daisy, uh... would you like to go out tonight?" He thrust the flowers in front of him, a shield from the verbal assault he expected.

She took the flowers gingerly and grinned back at him. "Let me get my purse," she replied as she dashed in, half-closing the door. His heart found its way from his chest to his throat. He couldn't believe it was happening.

He escorted her to the car, opened the door and helped her in. She giggled as she kept her eyes on him, her heart beating erratically as she sits down. As he walked around the back of his vehicle, he looked in the back seat. The bloody wrench was still sitting right behind his seat.

He loved his father. Jay knew, he was going to make his dad proud, tonight.


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I work as a video game content designer for Trion Worlds and am working on a Creative Writing degree through Full Sail University. My work can be found in Rift, Defiance, and Ultima Online.

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Author: Matt Fleming

Contributor: Rebeka Singer

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Evening rain seeped into the city ground to sleep that night. The boys wandered down alleys, jumped fences because they could, and ran through the dorm corridors for recruits. They found Sharon and Ashley in their room, readying for the night. The dresser door hung open and clothing collected in corners. They enlisted the girls to join them in their aimless revelry. “The night will be dreamless, and boundless.” They bartered promises for company.
Charlie had just taken his final exam earlier that day. It was the last day before holidays began. Then they would return home for a winter hiatus of boredom, Christmas turkeys and lousy reunions. The kind when everyone pretends that they have their life together and, over cheap cocktails parading as symbols of sophistication, smiles broadly at one another, bearing teeth, to convey post-adolescent success.
What were they in the day but a bunch of college kids? The world wasn’t looking now.
Ashley stroked on her eyeliner in the mirror above her bunk bed. Charlie clutched a bar on the battered wooden ladder, leading up to Ashley. The bed swung ever so slightly as he pulled on the bar and shifted his weight outward.
Walt eyed Sharon’s smooth hand reaching for his arm. Her shirt rose as she stretched out for him and a bundle of bracelets slunk to her elbow, exposing the white of her wrist. Walt shuddered at the sight of its vulnerable flesh. Even when they used to date, he never grasped her delicate wrists in affection, but preferred her sturdy shoulders and silky neck.
They navigated the maze-like halls, passed around a bottle of gin and cola. They laughed and leaned into each other’s bodies.
December nights are cold.
The December cold freezes memories: pictures with captions. Feeling and fact are muddled.
Outside, Ashley’s eyelids were silver dust. The wind swept that dust through the air.
Tiny particles glint under the streetlights.
To Charlie, Ashley's eyes shone something feral, something stirring, and he longed for the gaze of those dark eyes, the blackest he had ever seen.
The streets were quiet, whispers under foot. Those lost side streets, lined with tenements and markets and underground fetish bars, slept that night—on the outside. The city was a continent all its own. There was too much ground to cover in the waning hours until morning. They trespassed that continent.
"Look at us!" Sharon lifted her arms above her head, reaching her fingerless-gloved hands to the heavens. “We’re like outlaws.”
They wandered into a convenience store. The Indian clerk eyed their ashen skin. The boys bartered money for cigarettes and beer.
The four sat on the steps in front of a small deserted park. Walt administered each team member their share. Ashley and Sharon embraced and took long drags of their cigarettes. Everyone drank until the bottles were empty.
They spun softly in their newfound states of existence. The shiny streets fused with the moonless night and lit up the skies. Their eyes glowed something wild. Their eyes glowed triumph. Trespassers; now, proprietors of that continent beneath their feet; its atmosphere cradled their unsteady movements.
Ever forward.
The sky grayed over the Hudson. Lit bridges faded into the earliest hours of day. The lights of the city dulled and the sun peaked through the low, heavy clouds. The sunrise was just a color that time of year. You couldn’t feel its warmth blanketing the Earth. Just a vision, so far far away.
They wandered through the tangled city, tangled in each other’s arms, tangled in their minds.


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Ever-seeking human. Writer. Entrepreneur. Red.
Received MFA in Creative Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in May 2012.
Work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Eclectica Magazine, Red Savina Review, Drunk Monkeys, Sassafras Literary Magazine and The Fat City Review.

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Author: Rebeka Singer

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Anyone who has had poetry published by an editor over the years has a relationship with that editor whether one knows it or not.

Sometimes the relationship is lukewarm, other times bordering on friendship, occasionally deep. Over time, writer and the editor notice mannerisms in each other that are often never discussed since these insights have nothing to do with the work and time may be important to one or both. That's happened to me with editors over the years but never with such impact as happened in an incident that occurred not long ago.

This editor has accepted my work on a regular basis and has kept his distance, a safe place to be for anyone dealing with writers, most of whom know how good they are. Every once in awhile, however, he would tell me that my writing reminded him of some author I had never read. I had always heard of the authors, some of them alive, others recently dead, all very good writers by the standards of this era. He would usually recommend a book or two by each author that he would say I should read. This was the only time he would border on the imperative. Otherwise he would sound as if he had been reading The New Yorker since birth.

This kind of response from an otherwise detached but intelligent editor is invigorating. To be compared to a good writer one has never read has a double benefit: One must be writing some things well. And one must not be subliminally plagiarizing the style of the author mentioned since he has never read him or her.

In the last couple of months, however, this meticulous editor hasn't published a new issue, something he has done every month in the years since I first encountered his site. I had no idea what might be the matter. Stranger still, I had heard nothing from him and he was always one to respond.

I began thinking that maybe his failure to write might have had something to do with the last two pieces I had sent him. The content of both would be politically incorrect in his eyes but not in mine. I sent the pieces because it's good at times to get a reaction from someone whose taste you admire but who may not agree with you on the issues of the day or on the bigger issues of life.

Not hearing from him on the controversial pieces, I decided to send him a short story and a poem I thought he would like. Not too hot, not too cold, perhaps just right. Maybe he needed copy. Maybe for some odd reason submissions to his site were down.

A week later he wrote back and apologized for the delay in getting back to me. He said he liked the work I had just sent, did not mention the controversial pieces, and added that he would be putting his site on hiatus till "after the first of the year." Then he said, almost as a casual afterword, that he could not recall if he had told me that he has Stage 4 cancer. The email ended on that note.

No, he had not told me that tremulous fact and I mentioned that in my reply. I took a chance and said that if he ever simply wanted to sound off about something, I'd be happy to hear from him. I knew nothing about him or his life so I might be a safe place, I thought, for him to air whatever goes through the mind of someone with Stage 4 cancer.

So far he has not written back.

It will be hard waiting for the "after" that I hope comes "after the first of the year."


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Donal Mahoney has had work published in various print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: April Winters

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What a drag.

"Can I play?” Debbie wears a hopeful expression. She’s thinking maybe this time her brother and his pal will let her join them, seeing as how her only friend, Linda, just moved away and all.

“Go home, stupid! Even idiots know girls can’t play Cowboys and Indians,” her brother says. She knows Joey’s favorite television show is Wagon Train, but she doesn’t get it; some of those western television programs Joey likes so much have women shooting at Indians, too, so why can’t she play?

“Yeah!” Billy glares at Debbie, his face mirroring Joey’s contempt.

Chin quivering, Joey’s little sister turns toward home.

Debbie turns back and watches the boys disappear behind a cluster of trees where they’ll meet more friends to play guns and arrows with. She wonders why Joey is always so mean – like how he says she has a face only a mother could love and how, when Mama can’t hear, he calls her “horse’s ass mouth.” How does he even know? Did he see the Tucker’s horse lift its tail then say, “Whoa . . . Shadow, your butthole looks just like Debbie’s mouth!?”

Opening the front door, the aroma of chocolate temporarily makes her forget she has no one to play with. Debbie reaches for one of the warm cookies, but Mama stops her. “You’ll spoil your dinner, honey.”

Shoulders slumped Debbie hangs her head and walks to her room. During this morning’s thunderstorm, she finished reading her last Nancy Drew mystery. “This stinks,” Debbie says to no one. “The dumb Book Mobile won’t be here till next week . . . and it’s no fun to play Barbie all by myself.” A sigh escapes as she sprawls on her bed, a hot tear sliding out of one eye. “My only friend’s gone . . . I miss her so much!” Burying her face in the pillowcase, Debbie cries herself to sleep.

Later she is awakened by her mother, who holds out a fishing pole made from a stick, string and a safety pin. The girl hugs her mom then races the short distance to the creek. Shinnying out onto the tree trunk that overhangs the shallow water, Debbie clutches her gift. Securing the pole with her thigh, she pulls a bit of raw bacon out of the foil wrapping Mama gave her and sticks it on the open safety pin.

Not long afterward, Debbie tosses her fishing pole onto the still-damp ground in her front yard and thinks maybe fish don’t like bacon. She clicks her tongue. “Nah, Linda would’ve caught six fish, but stupid me can’t even catch one! Maybe Joey’s right… maybe I really am a dumb-dumb.”

A honey bee buzzes past as Debbie sits on the damp ground. She sees a caterpillar near her grass-stained tennis shoe and lays her finger on the sneaker. The fuzzy, multi-colored creature climbs aboard. Pulling her hand close to her face, Debbie says, “Looks like you don’t have anybody to play with, either, little guy.” With the sun’s warmth caressing her, Debbie gently picks the insect up with her other hand and places it on a patch of clover.

The drone of an airplane draws her attention. Shielding her eyes, she lies down and watches the speck inch its way across the summer sky. A lump fills her throat. “Linda rode a plane all the way to California. Wish I could have gone with her.”

She sniffs then pulls the elastic of her candy necklace to her mouth. Biting a pastel sweet, she crunches it and wonders momentarily if Linda will find new friends. “Heck, she’ll have lots of friends; and they’ll get to stay outside and play a long time because it’s so warm there.” Then Debbie remembers Mama said the winters in California only get down into the sixties, and Debbie has a horrible thought: does that mean Linda’s never going to see snow again? Eyes widening, Debbie bolts upright and sucks in her breath. “But she has to have snow to have a white Christmas!”

“Hey stupid, who ya talking to?” Billy smacks Joey’s arm and sniggers as the boys walk up behind Debbie.

“She better be talking to God,” Joey says, “praying Mama doesn’t beat the shit out of her for getting her clothes all wet!”

The screen door slams. From the porch, Mama yells, “Joseph Adam Robertson, I heard that. Come here this instant, young man!”

Joey hangs his head and slowly walks toward the house. Billy turns to Debbie. “Man, he’s in big trouble; did you see how mad she was? He’s not gonna get the belt is he?”

Debbie glances down at her tennis shoe. She wants to feel sorry for her brother, but he shouldn’t be so darned mean. She wonders if he’s going to get a whipping as a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.


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April Winters hopes to help people forget their troubles through her stories, even if it’s only for a little while. Her other works can be read at The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Short-Story.Me, The Short Humour Site, and here at Linguistic Erosion.

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Author: April Winters

Contributor: Krystina Balogh

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The old Victorian house loomed ahead, its windows a dark reflection of the pending autumn storm. Sasha pulled her thin jacket closed and quickened her pace. She didn’t like the house. It was eerie with its unkempt garden and peeling trim.

“Can you help me, please? Excuse me? Can you help me?”

Surprised, Sasha looked around and saw the little girl standing on the porch steps, her dress straight out of the 19th century.

That’s odd, she thought. I didn’t think anyone lived here. I guess someone finally bought the old place.

“Excuse me,” the little girl said once more, coming down the steps towards Sasha. “Please, I need help.”

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Sasha asked, rubbing her hands together to keep warm in the chill air. She should have worn her heavier jacket.

“It’s my father,” the little girl said. “He’s fallen and I can’t wake him up. Please, help him.” The little girl turned and moved quickly up the porch steps.
Sasha started to follow and then remembered her cell phone in her pocket.

“Did you call 911?” she asked as she pulled it out. “You should call 911 before you do anything when someone is hurt, you know.”

The little girl stopped near the top of the steps and replied, “The telephone isn’t connected yet.”

“That’s ok, I’ve got my cell. I’ll call 911…” Sasha said as she started to dial. Before she was able to finish dialing, the little girl bolted down the stairs, grabbed her free hand, and tugged her up the stairs. The force of the tug sent the cell phone flying out of her hand and onto the sidewalk. Sasha tried to retrieve it but the little girl wouldn’t let go.

“Please, there is no time,” the little girl pleaded. “He’s badly hurt. You must help him!”

Sasha saw how frantic she was and heard the panic in the little girl’s voice. She decided it wouldn’t hurt to check on her father first and then come back for the cell phone. No one would bother it and she was the only help in sight; the neighborhood was practically abandoned.

Sasha let the little girl pull her up the porch steps and into the foyer. It was dark inside. There were heavy velvet curtains covering the windows and no lights were on. She noticed a switch on the wall near the front door and pushed it. Nothing happened. “No electricity?” she asked the little girl.

“Yes, but the fuse blew. Father was going down to replace it when he fell,” she replied. The little girl picked up a candle stub from the foyer table, lit it, and motioned for Sasha to follow. They moved quickly through the gloom, the candle providing the only light.

The little girl stopped at a nondescript door just outside the kitchen. “Father is down there, at the bottom of the cellar stairs,” she explained as she pulled a key from her pocket. The lock softly clicked in the quiet hallway.

Suddenly, Sasha did not want to open the door. She did not want to see what was on the other side. Stop being silly, she told herself. There’s nothing on the other side except some stairs, the cellar, and an injured man. She took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and reached for the doorknob. She slowly opened the door. She let loose a nervous giggle when nothing gruesome jumped out.

Sasha moved to the top of the stairs and peered into the darkness below.

She couldn’t see anything, not even the little girl’s father. “Do you have a flashlight I could use?” she asked.

“Father had the only flashlight. It’s down there, now,” the little girl replied as she pointed down the cellar stairs.

“A candle?”

“This is the only one I have and I don’t want to be left in the dark.”

A soft scratching noise rose from the cellar. Sasha looked down the stairs, willing herself to see through the darkness with no luck.

“What exactly happened to your father?” she asked. “You never said.”

The little girl looked anxious. “We were in the kitchen when the fuse blew. Father was in a hurry and didn’t watch where he was going. He missed a step and fell down the stairs. I tried to help him but I couldn’t get him to wake up.”

“You saw the flashlight next to him?” Sasha was hesitant. She really did not want to go down the stairs into that thick, impenetrable darkness. Something wasn’t right.

“Yes, it was on the floor next to him. Please, go down and make sure he’s ok. I couldn’t get him to wake up,” the little girl sobbed. “Please!”

Sasha sighed and turned towards the stairs. As she picked up her foot to navigate the first step she felt a hard shove from behind and lost her footing. She tumbled head over heels down the stairs to the floor below, hitting her head hard. The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was the door closing and the key turning in the lock. The last thing she saw was that she was alone at the bottom of the stairs.

In the hallway the little girl removed the key from the lock and put it back in her pocket. A small, wicked smile played across her lips. That should keep them occupied and well-fed for a while, she thought.


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Krystina Balogh is a freelance writer that haunts the mid-Atlantic region of the USA. She dabbles in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres and is the author of numerous short stories. When she is not busy writing, she indulges her love for the supernatural and video games.

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Author: Krystina Balogh

Contributor: Karen Lindsey

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Sheila had no particular fondness for statues, holy pictures, or other renditions of Jesus. Baby Jesus always looked so snarkily cute she found him wholly without charm. The handsome young white hippy looked smug, even when he was interacting with children: she had a sneaky feeling he was giving them bars of healthy snacks. Worst was the morbid near-corpse nailed to the cross, its sparse right ribs bleeding heavily.

Raised by vaguely Christian parents, she had a slight belief in God and the afterlife. When her kids were young she had a Christmas tree and an Easter egg hunt. When they grew up and left home, she abandoned the practices comfortably. Nor did she ever go to church, unless weddings or funerals required it. On the whole, she preferred the funerals: they were less noisy and the food was less ostentatious.

But the year her husband left her for a younger woman, her friends decided to make her holidays bright, whether she wanted them to be or not. “Sheila,” they’d say warmly, “holidays are always rough the first year.” In fact, they weren’t especially rough for her; neither she nor Ralph had cared much about them. She enjoyed them as days off work, allowing her to sit and read or watch old films on television. She was not even that devastated by the end of a marriage that had long since gone sour. But her friends meant well, so she tagged along with several of them to midnight mass at a small Catholic church nearby. At least the music would be good, she told herself.

The music was indeed good, played by a small but highly competent orchestra and a well-trained soprano and tenor. Jesus, of course, was inescapable, in all his baby-through-crucifix manifestations, but she was prepared to ignore them.

Looking around the church she noticed one quiet, unpeopled corner that harbored a large box of toys—evidently some day-care center worked here during the week. There were dolls and plush toys, some small dinosaurs and a few of the less violent action figures. (It amused her to see Jane Austin among them.) Inevitably there was the little kiddy crèche, with its sadly smiling velcro-ed Virgin and its rather grim Joseph, plus assorted angels, shepherds, and barnyard animals. But it was the toy on the shelf above the crèche that grabbed her attention. This was the oddest Jesus figure she’d ever seen—a ragdoll that, dressed and coiffed differently, could easily be a Raggedy Andy, like the one she’d had as a kid. But this fellow had brown, shoulder length hair and a beard; he wore sandals and an Arab-y sort of robe, and his painted eyes had the saddest expression she’d ever seen.

He was totally incongruous. The size of a living baby, he would have looked perfect in the church’s crèche, except that he was clearly no infant. Yet there was nothing of pedant or martyr about him. It seemed that the cloth artist had captured the various images of Jesus in one piece; this God was his own trinity, at one with all human pain, from the cry of the soggy-diapered baby to the abandonment of a lover and on through the ultimate agony of death. The eyes could weep in a crib or in Gethsemane; yet the mouth, covered by its mustache, was nearly smiling. She could not look away from the creature.

As the mass ended, and people walked out of various aisles to speak with the priest or collect their altar boys or gather chatting in little groups, Sheila slipped away from her friends toward the dark corner of the play area. With her arm beneath its neck, she lifted the ragdoll as tenderly as if it were a newborn infant, and cradled it in her arms for a few minutes. Around her, some children were singing an old hymn, whose lyrics she ignored but whose soft sound she picked up—-“Holy God We Praise Thy Name,” she thought it was called. The music combined lullaby and dirge with a small touch of solemn pleasure, and she hummed it to the ragdoll in her arms. Quietly then she put him down and rejoined her friends. She would come back here: perhaps at Easter, perhaps not until next Christmas. She knew the Jesus doll would be waiting for her. As she left the church, she wondered if there would be any places selling Christmas trees open.


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Old writer trying genres new to me

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Author: Karen Lindsey

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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It's Christmas Eve and Paddy Kelly is on his way home from work at the Post Office. He stops at Rosen's Deli and orders a brisket of beef sandwich on pumpernickel rye with a smear of horseradish and a "new" kosher pickle on the side.

Ever since he came from Ireland to Chicago years ago, Paddy has preferred the "new" kosher pickle to the standard kosher pickle because it's crunchier, he says. It's more like a cucumber, he told his wife, because it isn't cured as long as the standard kosher pickle. He loves the sound as he bites into one, a sound he magnifies whenever he brings his wife to Rosen's. Maggie Kelly likes the new pickle but doesn't like the sound of Paddy chomping on it in public.

"I'll take a potato latke, too, Sol," Paddy says to Mr. Rosen, the proprietor of the deli and eldest son of a rabbi killed at the Treblinka Concentration Camp by the Nazis during World War II. Sol was the only survivor in his family. His parents and four siblings were gassed at Treblinka. At 76 Sol has now almost come to grips with the murders except on Jewish holidays when everything about the Treblinka camp dashes back into his mind. If it weren't for the American soldiers getting there on time, he would have gone to the gas chamber as well.

"You want coffee now Paddy?" Sol says, stationed in his white apron at the big silver urn, cup in hand. The apron is a patchwork of all the condiments Sol has dispensed during his long day. Mustard stains are particularly hard to get out, according to Mrs. Rosen, a tiny woman, who reminds Sol of that whenever she's behind the counter helping out.

"Coffee later, Sol, with a piece of cheesecake. No dinner tonight. Maggie's not feeling well. I'll eat here and take noodle soup to go. I hope she'll feel better in the morning. She'd never forgive herself if she's too sick to go to Mass on Christmas Day."

It's always quiet on Christmas Eve at Rosen's Deli but this time it's quieter than usual. Two regulars, Ruben Cohen and Ruben Goldberg, are the only other customers They are sitting on their usual thrones at the counter, with an empty throne between them, facing each other in almost matching fedoras and arguing as always about the definition of certain Yiddish words.

Cohen and Goldberg have been arguing about the fine points--and not so fine points--of the Yiddish language for years with no sign of detente. Right now, the argument is over whether "kunilemel" and "shmendreck" are Yiddish synonyms--or not. Ruben Cohen says it's worse to be called a shmendreck than a kunilemel and Ruben Goldberg maintains that is not accurate.

"They're both the same, Cohen!" Goldberg proclaims, prior to a slurp of coffee.

"Are you telling me you'd just as soon be called a shmendreck as a kunilemel," Cohen yells at Goldberg.

If a selection had to be made, Goldberg would probably be judged the scholar of the two in that he usually completes the crossword puzzle in the Chicago Sun-Times in half an hour. Cohen, on the other hand, is currently a cab driver with a degree in accounting. He's between jobs, which is usually the case for Ruben Cohen, and he hasn't got time for crossword puzzles. But he'll do your taxes accurately for a lot less than H&R Block.

"Time is money," Cohen says to Goldberg as he heads for the door. "I got no time for crossword puzzles on Christmas Eve. I'll be getting quite a few fares for Midnight Mass. It's tough for the old-timers to walk a few blocks. Ask Kelly over there. He'll tell you that's the truth.

Paddy Kelly, in the meantime, is lost in thought as he finishes his cheesecake and coffee and walks up to pay his tab at the front of the store. Once again Sol is there wrestling with his ancient register. Some days it works and some days it doesn't. Sol shakes it at least three times before putting in a call to the repairman. On Christmas Eve, the charge would be higher and it's high enough, Sol says, on regular days.

"How's Mrs. Rosen, Sol?," Paddy asks. "Haven't seen her in weeks."

"Cancer, Paddy," Sol says. "They operate next week. Things don't look good. The docs say everything depends on what they find. Up until now she's had good health for a woman her age."

Paddy has no idea what to say. He knows Minerva Rosen better than Sol. Years ago it was Minerva Rosen who handed him his first new pickle. And then she gave him his first knish. Two days after that, she brought over his first steaming bowl of sweet and sour cabbage soup.

Paddy had eaten a lot of cabbage in Ireland but nothing as delicious as Mrs. Rosen's sweet and sour cabbage soup. He always comes in for a bowl on St. Patrick's Day before heading to the party at the Knights of Columbus Hall.

The Rosens cater that event every year. For weeks afterward arguments continue among the guests, most of them immigrants from Ireland, as to which corned beef is better--Rosen's kosher corned beef or the version they ate on holidays back in Ireland, provided their families could afford it. Otherwise they ate boiled cabbage and potatoes with a piece of pork tossed in for flavoring.

Paddy has always preferred Rosen's corned beef but he would never risk his life by saying so in front of the other Knights.

"Sol, at church tomorrow, Maggie and I will pray hard for Mrs. Rosen. I hope to God the surgery works. Sometimes praying is all that anyone can do."

"I know," Sol says as the register finally springs open. "You have a good Christmas, Paddy, and we'll see what the doctors say next week. The best to you and Maggie."


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Donal Mahoney has had work published in various print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Alexander Ziperovich

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I went out for a smoke and there was a long, used syringe standing upright in the gravel inside the crowded dog park in front of my building. I went up to the gate and started yelling but the hundred barking dogs drowned me out. As I stood there shouting I watched a Doberman whose curiosity had been piqued by the shiny object walk up. The big dog stooped and sniffed around, tilting its head to the side in a final consideration before wandering off. Then a young, ebullient poodle came bounding up and greedily fastened its jaws down on the needle. The stunned dog stopped moving for a moment, its tail limp, before letting out a high-pitched scream. It staggered around wildly, blood pouring from its snout as the needle dangled from the roof of its gaping mouth before falling back down to the gravel.

That was the morning that preceded the night that I met Annie. I found this girl with blood-red hair at a bar in Capitol Hill and we ended up at this beautiful condo her parents had bought her up the block. We fucked everywhere, except on the little Juliet balcony; it was too small for two people. After we finished having sex she started with the Shakespeare shit.

“Michael, you’ve read Romeo and Juliet, right?” She was standing above me in this tiny silk negligée watching me pour scotch into a cut-glass tumbler from a crystal decanter. We had just finished fucking for the third time and little beads of sweat were drying on my naked body as I sat there at this beautifully polished mahogany table, my bare ass in her expensive leather chair and the glass of scotch in my hand.

“I hate Shakespeare.” I got into telling her how he wasn’t even real, how Shakespeare was just an amalgamation of peasant ghost writers who got fucked out of there writing bylines by a couple of greedy assholes from the nobility because they had this idea that you had to have blue blood to write in those days.

“But haven’t you read Romeo and Juliet? Don’t you think it would be divine to fall so madly in love that you would rather die than be without your lover?” This strange, yearning came through her voice. “No,” I carefully said, “I think it’s melodramatic bullshit.”

“I think it’s the most pure expression of love in the world.” She gazed out her fifth story window at the lights of the city below. I shuddered, thinking, “Death is the most beautiful expression of love?” I had another drink and left.

I saw Annie from time to time around town and we even fucked again, at my place. The same thing happened, too. We were in my bed sharing a cigarette after some particularly loveless sex. “God,” She started, “Romeo and Juliet really are the epitome of love,” She stared up dreamily watching the tendrils of smoke curl up into the ceiling. “They are love.” She said it breathlessly, the corners of her mouth tipped up like little hooks as she sat there with her eyes closed, opiated with the idea. I just sat there saying nothing.

Some months went by and I started seeing her with this guy I knew, Ryan, this depressed artist kid with perpetual circles under his eyes. He walked around with her with those big black circles under his eyes looking vacant all the time and every time I saw them they were together and it was like she was hard at work casting a spell on him. She’d be talking up at him as he sort of stood there swaying, just taking it all in looking hypnotized. She was clearly moving something around inside of him.

I was walking down the street where she lived one night and it was a scene, ambulances and cop cars, even a fire truck. There were paramedics and firefighters and cops everywhere, standing around a large mass under a sheet. I said to myself, “Fuck, she did it. They killed themselves. They jumped.”

That’s when I saw her sitting on a curb across the street with one of those white blankets you see medics give people after they’re rescued from fires or car accidents draped over her shoulders. She sat there alone on the curb silently staring up into space. I asked her what happened and she slowly shook her head at me as if awakening from some private reverie and looked at me and said, “Love. Love happened.” Then she yawned.


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Alexander Ziperovich is a writer living in Seattle with his girlfriend Soph. He paints for fun and even sells art once in awhile, but his first love is the written word. Find more of him at www.everythingsings.org.

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Author: Alexander Ziperovich

Contributor: Sean Crose

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By December's end, it was all over. After drinking your way through New Year's weekend up in Boston, you awoke to the dullness of a wintry wasteland and a complete, total, lack of direction.
“Where to from here?” was the question much on your mind that January.
Unfortunately, you couldn't find an answer. Not in the ten songs you and the guys had recorded. Not in your mother's nagging. Not in your new job at the bakery. Nowhere.
“I'm at a crossroads,” you had uttered to Mom one day during one of your unending stream of arguments.
“You're always at a crossroads,” she replied.
She was right and you knew it. Still, you were helpless to change your situation. You'd have taken the road less traveled, but that road wasn't presenting itself to you. No road was.
Fortunately you got around to finishing the book Jody had let you borrow that night just before Christmas. Remember that night? How it was snowing like hell up there in Springfield and you thought you were going to die from alcohol poisoning?
Funny how you sat there in Jody's kitchen not really caring if you lived or died. Not funny, actually. Scary. There you were, pale, on the verge of dying from drink, and not giving a damn.
That was truly your furthest point away from God.
Yet you somehow remembered to take the book with you once the snow stopped and you figured you were actually going to live to drink another day. When you got around to finishing the book a full month later, you felt like a door had finally opened.
“So this is what I'm going to do,” you said to Mom that Sunday afternoon, minutes after you had read the last sentence.
“Sounds good.”
The fact that her “sounds good” actually came across as genuine pleased you. Let's face it, those words, or , rather, the tone in which they were spoken, made you truly feel like you were on to something.
And so you began the adventure of writing your story, just as the author of your new favorite book had done. Your life was heading in an exciting new direction. The previous year's adventure was over, but so was your old life.
Or so you thought.
Amidst all the preparation and hard work that went into penning an entire book on your rather unusual experiences, a book dealing with hospitals, specialists and brain scans, you were still pretty much yourself.
Oh, you could now go on and on about how nonfiction was the new fiction. You could also walk around serenely confident that you had both the talent and the unusual back story to make yourself interesting to a publisher. Yet you were you.
All that changed, really, were your thoughts. And by thoughts I mean those drunken reveries you'd have down in the den at three in the morning, when the television was off and all was quiet. The subject of the reveries may have changed, but the cause of them remained the same.
Still, the work and new direction served as bricks that would eventually become a rather lengthy wall. For some chosen roads, be they more or less well traveled, extend farther than originally thought.


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Sean Crose is a writer and teacher. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Jen, and Cody, the world's greatest cat.

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Author: Sean Crose

Contributor: Ryan Priest

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His breath is hot against my face which is funny because his words are lighting a fire in my mind. He’s so animated and passionate that I don’t care that I don’t know what he’s talking about, don’t really know what I’m nodding along with. I’m just so happy to have his attention.
I can’t help but to hang on every word, every delicate detail of this encounter. He’s got that thing, charisma.
It’s like a magnet in his smile and you can’t help but to be drawn in. You simply like him and have a desperate need for him to like you back. You always want more of him. It’s not about sex but he is sexy. You’re not gay but you would be for him. If he asked you. You’d do anything to make him like you. This is charisma and I know this. I recognize it easily but still I am powerless against it. More power than any one man should have, yet he’s got it in spades.
He’s gone on for longer than ever before. I’ve followed him, taken his picture a thousand times, in a thousand ways. At every premiere I’ve been there. I gave him five once as he was on his way out of a club. I didn’t wash my hand for a week. And now finally here he is one on one with me talking, sharing with me as if I was a real person to him. This magnanimity humbles me even more.
I quake in his presence but I don’t want it to end. Ever. I can’t even fully enjoy this moment because I can feel its inevitable end coming quick. Another star will walk into the bar and he’ll be gone. Or his agent will call and he’ll tell me, “Sorry, got to take this,” as he casually turns his perfectly contoured back to me.
The sun will set on this short gift and then life will be all downhill from there. There’s not going to be any topping this, beers with a superstar. I could follow him for another five years and never again this close, this candid, this personal.
I can tell by the rhythm of his speech he wants to wind this down. And why shouldn’t he? He’s got glorious places to go and magnificent things to do. At this moment I’m glad I always carry a gun. I’m glad because in a sense I can make this moment last forever. That is to say at least things won’t have to get any worse. Go out on a high.
I’m smiling so hard I’m crying. Either that or I’m crying so hard it’s making me laugh. The gun’s out now wiggling at him almost out of my control. I can’t hold still but it doesn’t matter at this range. His blood tastes of syrup and iron.
In a day I’ll be famous too. Not a star but famous none the less. They’ll never be able to tell his story without mentioning my name. I’ll have my own Wikipedia page and it’ll be linked to his for as long as there’s an internet.
Even in death he looks like a god. His body fallen over in its chair like a perfect pose. Like an artist would depict a murder.
The muzzle’s a lot hotter than I figured. It burns the soft underside of my chin. Notoriety is just a different kind of fame. The click of the hammer sends a sharp vibration rattling through my jaw.
This is worth dying for. This is worth the bullet that’s about to spin its way out of the barrel and through my brain. This isn’t what I dreamed about as a child but neither is it the worst way it could have gone. Being a somebody, anybody beats being a nobody. Especially if you weren’t lucky enough to be endowed with any charisma of your own.


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Ryan Priest is a screenwriter who lives in Hollywood. His newest project "Top Flight Security" just premiered on Youtube as a web series.

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Author: Ryan Priest