Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

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“I heard it was murder.”

“It wasn’t murder, it was an altercation. Self-defense if anything.”

“Wait, what happened exactly?”

“Well, the Daniel guy was trying to get out of drugs, trouble- you know what I mean. Trying to get his life back together. He never really was the same after his sister passed away.”

“Yeah, I heard about that! That was so shocking and sad.”

“Yeah it really was. So, he had this party and a few of the guys showed up with stuff. They were trying to shoot up in his bathroom or something, and he didn’t want them to. One guy got really upset- said he was “disrespecting” them or something, can you believe that? Just because he didn’t want them doing drugs in his bathroom? So the fight between them just got bigger and bigger.”

“Wow- well, what did the rest of the people at the party do?”

“I don’t know…you would think there would be some interference.”

“Yeah, really. I’d be scared shitless if I were there though.”

“No kidding. So then the guy pulls a gun on the Daniel guy, or there was a gun near them, I’m not sure whose gun it was or where it came from but I just know Daniel shot the other guy first.”

“So it was self-defense. Kill or be killed.”

“Pretty much. The bad part is that the Daniel guy felt so bad and freaked out about shooting this guy that he yelled to his girlfriend to call an ambulance, and then while she did that he went into the other room and shot himself.”

“You mean he’s the one that killed himself?”

“Yeah. What a horrible situation to be in….”

“So he murdered himself.”

“You can’t ‘murder’ yourself.”

“Then he murdered his guilt.”



Walking around the neighborhood and hearing people talk this way, I know they have it all wrong. Sure, they may have the story down more or less- but not the details. Nobody living knows the exact details. They may know the story, but they don’t know a damn thing about my cousin Daniel or the reasons why he probably shot himself. And they never will. For some reason it makes me bristle to hear people conjecturing, discussing things in such a calm manner. And every time I hear someone proclaim that suicides go to hell, I go red and think, “So will you.”


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Currently, I am obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte and live with my husband in Durham, NC. I also wrote a book which is due to be released later this year.

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: George Sparling

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Smoking black hashish with Mary as we sit on a foam mattress upon plywood held up with cement blocks in a one-room shack at the edge of a hacienda, bathroom in an adjacent white concrete building. I saved money from my American job and then quit. I fled bosses, alcoholic DTs, a woman who may or may not have told cops I raped her, collection agencies, jail time for two bad checks, my infant son taken away by my ex-wife, hiding from loan sharks I owed money.

1968: the army massacred students in the Tlateloco housing project in Mexico City. Mary and I know some of the students but not what happened to them. Who knows the fate of our bones or how many times we’ll be buried.

Shit, I was high. Mary stares at my reflection in the window, hashish made from female flowers of cannabis plants, females stronger than males. I stare at her glassy image too. Mary says, “Take a look at yourself,” and I took my hands off her breasts.

Have I got uglier since we first met? She deflects my potential to verbally or physically attack her, and says, “I know a drummer in San Antonio, let’s hitch there, it’s over 800 miles, here’s the last of my Dexedrine.” I put up no resistance.

We each swallow two tablets and finally make it to a main highway headed north. The truck driver evicts his partner from the cab and he must hang on to exposed cargo. Shaky life being odd man out. Mary chatted a bit in Spanish, the driver pleased to have a nice-looking gringo so near and sometimes he touched her thigh after shifting gears. He pulls over and we get out, the helper climbs up and assumes his rightful place.

Nearer the border, I try conversation but she turns her back. Mary will not have sex with me across the road in well-concealed foliage; we could, and she knows it and looks peeved, her face serious. What’s a reflection mean?

Mary’s stern face, her eyebrows bent low over bright green eyes, her smooth arms hug me out of comradeship, and she spits a thick wad of mango into the dirt and says, “Not ripe.” Fatigued, I want to quit and sleep by the side of the road, hoping some peasants will feed me when I awake and take care of me forever.

Yet it isn’t that bad hitching, especially when we talk about the students and revolution. Mary reads headlines at a nearby newspaper stand and tries to learn more about the students.

“Sometimes I think those students should give up,” she says, “Don’t you ever get that feeling?”

“I don’t think real revolutionaries ever give up. Do you?”

“They should save their lives if they know they’ll lose.”

She gives me $50 so when we cross the border, agents will not consider me a bum.

Neal Cassidy, close friend of Kerouac’s, died on Mexican railroad tracks earlier this year. We talk about the psychedelic bus’s name “Further,” what it means, and how Cassidy threw a 4-pound hammer in the air ad infinitum, catching the handle every time, and Mary tells me her drummer boyfriend had dark skin beneath hollowed out eyes like Neal. A small herd of goats crosses the street with a bearded goatherd.

I see her as she walks fifty feet ahead, standing on a road in position for a ride to the border, while I lag behind watching her black hair blow around her head, and remember sitting in a dark theater and saw Kim Novak in the movie about “The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders” on our first date, my first time with a young Italian woman, how I stroked her hair, its black, lustrous strands in affectionate darkness.

I nicknamed her Moll but she never came up one for me.

Three rides later, we were so near the border that we walk across a bridge at Nuevo Laredo, then into Laredo and at customs border guards separate us, Mary led away and I enter a room with five uniformed guards and show them my passport. They strip search me. For drugs? For guns? For intimidation? For political suspicion? Cannabis aroma? I grab my balls, and one checks my rectum with a flashlight, jokes about my girlfriend, Did I sleep with her? Mary tells me they did the same with her, but brave enough to curse the guard when her rough gloved fingers were abusive.

We wander around the U.S. side, uncertain of the unaccustomed noise. We finally make it to San Antonio, and Mary phones her friend who picks us up. He has an apartment and looks at me as suspiciously as the guards had, and he and Mary talk about old friends, what happened to them. Had they intercourse or just talked, I didn’t care. I flop on thick coats, using a few shirts as a pillow. They stood in the next room as drummer talked about making it someday. “You gotta keep the band together, otherwise the band breaks up faster than one night of quickie sex.”

Later, around noon, Mary tells me she’s not going back, she wants to stay in San Antonio with drummer. Mary gives me another $50 and we hug, bonk fists like revolutionaries do. Too tired and winded for my 26-year-old body, I’m vulnerable and afraid I’ll get busted. Suddenly, it’s like a four-pound hammer hitting my head---we no longer are a couple.

I hitch back to the shack, smoke hashish on the mattress, and see my double stare back at me in the windowpane. After more hits, I see Mary’s face, but it slowly dissolves.


- - -

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Author: George Sparling

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

- -
Gray sky, cars honking, and a homeless man sitting against a doorway with a brown-bagged wine bottle behind him - another day in the city. He was almost your typical homeless man, with a withered face and ratty gray dreadlocks, his black skin creased by the sharp chilly fall weather of at least a decade. Now it was hot and sticky in the midsummer heat. He had an unusually cheery demeanor though, talking to all who surrounded him and not asking for anything though a hat with money sat in front of him. His left pant leg was torn, faded, and rolled up to the upper thigh revealing his prosthetic. People passed- a lady with a chic leather trench coat, a man carrying a bouquet of flowers, several youth covered in headphones or talking on cell phones. And then there was a twelve year old boy passing through slowly on his red ten-speed bicycle. He was almost your typical boy, with an LA Dodgers baseball cap and a backpack carrying what little math homework he had been assigned. He stopped in front of the vendor situated a few feet from the homeless man and ordered a blue popsicle. As he pushed the change on the counter towards the vendor, he turned to hop back onto his bike, when he noticed the man sitting in the doorway smiling despite his rotten luck. He looked at the popsicle, then at the man, and then rode his bike up in front of him.
“Hi! My name’s Manny. Like Manny Ramirez,” the boy said in a friendly and unafraid tone. He may as well have been talking to anyone he just met.
“Really? You don’t say,” the homeless man rasped. “I’m Billy.”
“Like Billy Joel!”
“Yeah, yeah! That’s not bad.”
“Would you like a popsicle, Billy?”
“Oh, thank you, thank you! That’s so nice.”
Manny handed the popsicle over to Billy who gratefully took a lick and smiled back at the boy with the few teeth he had left.
Just then a different nearby vendor came over and present Billy with a hot dog, then walked back to his stand. Apparently they were old friends.
“I love you, man!” Billy yelled. The vendor laughed.
Manny eyed Billy’s prosthetic leg but knew he shouldn’t ask.
A female cop walked up and Manny got nervous she would be angry.
“Hey Billy, how are ya?” she asked with a small smile.
“I’m alright, I’m alright. Got this young man here and that clown over there being all nice to me. It’s great.”
“Making new friends, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Well, good. I’ll be back to check on you later.” The woman walked off slowly and calmly.
Manny drank the man in through his eyes.
“It was really good to meet you, Billy,” Manny said.
“You too, you too. Thanks for the pop! You too.”
Then Manny hopped back on his bike and pedaled back to his home near the tracks.


- - -
Currently, I am obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte and live with my husband in Durham, NC. I also wrote a book that is due to be released later this year.

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: Jim Harrington

- -
I crouched behind a lilac bush and watched the horse gallop down the street and stop in front of my place. I hadn't received any mail for three days and wondered what was going on. I thought maybe kids were pranking me.

The rider wore a Stetson, chaps, and cowboy boots with silver inlays in the toes. His back was hunched, and he must have weighed 125 pounds stepping out of the tub. He rode a black stallion big enough to win a game of chicken with a bulldozer. His pants were AWOL.

"Hey, pardner," I said, as he reached down and opened my mailbox. "What the hell ya think you're doin'?" I didn't normally talk like this, and even odder I felt like spitting into a bucket.

He snatched my mail out of the box, rifled through it, and spurred the horse on to Fred's. I sauntered over--I'd never sauntered before either--and repeated my question. He looked at me like I was the one who belonged in the hoosegow.

"Only advertisements." He looked at me and shrugged. "Same as you get every day."

We stared at each other for a moment and when I didn't respond, he reached down and opened Fred's box. The horse snorted and pounded the ground as if instructed to count to three. I took a step back.

"Well, it just ain't right--stealin' a man's mail," I said, my thumbs hooked in the waist of my jeans.

When I realized where my hands were, I lowered them and watched the rider take Fred's mail. It didn't look any more important than mine. Still…

I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't want to get into an argument with anybody, especially someone not wearing pants. I couldn't call the police. They'd ask lots of questions and make me write stuff down. I was too busy for that.

I looked up and spotted Fred waving at me through the window. I couldn't see him well enough, even squinting over my glasses, to know if he was waving me inside or telling me to get away. I knew he wouldn't come out until the guy left, then he'd blame me for his mail being stolen. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Fred knew about the half-naked highwayman before I did.

I turned to see the rider put something back in Fred's mailbox. Without looking at me, he said, "Bill. I got enough of my own." He closed the box and picked up the reins.

"Well, tomorrow I'll be out here with a gun," I said. "So you better not come back." I realized my hands were at my sides as if I was reaching for a pair of holstered, pearl-handled beauties.

"Tomorrow's Sunday," he said and rode off to Edith Clanton's.

I watched him stop at two more boxes before I turned and headed into the setting sun, even though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon.


- - -
Jim Harrington began writing fiction in 2007 and has agonized over the form ever since. He serves as Fiction Editor for Apollo's Lyre ( http://apollos-lyre.tripod.com/index.html) and Flash Markets Editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles (http://www.everydayfiction.com/flashfictionblog/). Jim's Six Questions For . . . blog (http://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/) provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” You can read more of his stories at http://jpharrington.blogspot.com.

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Author: Jim Harrington

Contributor: Marissa Halvorson

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Whimpers pierced the cold, dank air of the dark room. In the shadows cast by the dim light filtering through the bars, stood a woman. Dark hair tumbled down her shoulders in voluminous curls. A hood, attached to a black cloak, hid her face. She faced the room, where a man lay on his cot, whimpers caught in his damaged throat.

“Franklin Jae Lynford,” she called. Her voice rang out in the emptiness like bells echoing off the dark walls. Her rich voice held no trace of emotion.

The whimpers came to an abrupt halt, and the man uncurled himself and looked around. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face and soaked his shirt through. Bright with fever, his eyes darted from side to side. The woman stepped into the dim light.

A grimace twisted the man’s features as illness once again overtook him and he pushed himself away from her. The spasm lasted several seconds before he was able to look at her once more.

Finally, she removed her hood. Underneath, her skin glowed pale, her eyes red. A cruel smile warped her features, which would otherwise have been quite beautiful. She undid the clasp on her brooch and let her cloak fall as she stepped forward, toward the man. “Franklin Jae Lynford, you have been summoned.”

The man’s eyes widened, and he stumbled out of his cot, away from her. Her red gown swishing around her ankles as she moved, the woman laughed, a cold, cruel laugh. “You cannot run from your fate, Franklin. This is who you are.”

“Who are you?” Franklin’s voice rasped out, barely audible even in the silence of the room.

“Franklin, Franklin…you ought to know. You spent most of your life worshipping my master. Why, then, do you run from him now?”

“I have family,” Franklin gasped. “My children—they’re counting on me!”

“Be honest, Frank. Your family lost faith in you a long time ago…I believe it was after you murdered that poor woman…what was her name? If I recall correctly, Jane Kaikoura died on the night of December 24, 2001. Six years ago. Her family spent Christmas in mourning. Isn’t that right, Frank?”

Frank whimpered, deep in his throat. He covered his eyes, as if by acting like she wasn’t there, it would make her go away.

“Then, of course, you knew what would happen, so you ran. Am I right, Frank?”

Frank moaned and his fingers clutched at his face. “Stop. Please stop,” he groaned.

The woman smiled. She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder. “So, you ran, but you didn’t stop. Your murders continued all the way through the country as you traveled from place to place. I could list off every single one of your murders. How about it, Frank? Would you like to hear about your kills?”

Frank lifted his face, his eyes wide and full of unshed tears. “Please, no more. I know what I’ve done. I’ve changed, though, I swear!”

The woman threw back her head and laughed. “People don’t change, Frank. I know that better than anyone. Devlin summons you, Frank. Do you answer his summons?”

The tears in Frank’s eyes spilled over and poured down his unshaven cheeks. “No!” he cried. “You can’t take me!”

“Frank, you know what will happen if you do not answer the summons. Your life is over. You are dying. If you do not answer Devlin, you shall never have an afterlife. Devlin would be most disappointed. He might even be disappointed enough to appear here himself to…convince you.”

Frank’s face paled, rough stubble standing out against the white of his face. “I don’t want to go,” he whispered. “I don’t belong there. I’ve changed.”

The woman held out her hand and her cloak rose and draped itself over her shoulders. “The summons is not an option, Frank. Either you come, or we take you. Devlin takes you.”

Frank squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists tight. The woman watched his fists relaxed and he fell limp. “Alright.” He slumped against the wall. “Take me to hell.”


- - -
I have been writing since I was ten and have been working towards publication of my novel. Occasionally I write short stories and flash fiction, and I'm hoping for publication of this one as my first.

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Author: Marissa Halvorson

Contributor: Elyk S. Von Ire

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Jon’s drunk again. Swaying at the table. Willing his eyes to stay open. Hebrew swirls in the air around us with the smoke. Jon stares forward. His eyelids are anchors that tow his head down with them. He snaps it back up and looks around. Again, he stares. He nods.
The three Israelis are either too stoned or too wrapped up in their own
conversation to notice Jon’s slumping head or closing eyes.
But I’d never be able to tell for sure. I don't speak Hebrew either. Maybe they are discussing it ad nauseum.
Jon nods. His eyes closed. When he opens them, slowly, he looks at me. His eyes are glistening. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t. His eyes rest on the bottle of rum, it's triumphant last inch still at the bottom.
He grabs the bottle and turns the label towards him. I assume he is staring, not reading. His hand slips a little and the bottle wobbles, then rights itself.
Jon leans back in his white, plastic chair. On two legs, against the wall, he looks up through closed eyelids.
Suddenly, he snaps his head forward and stands up. Again, I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t. The Israelis look at him, conversation on pause for one pregnant second, then turn back to one another with bouncy, guttural conversation.
I wonder what Jon’s thinking about.
I wonder if he's going to be whistling in bed like my dad used to, his iPod speakers on all night, music coming through the paper thin walls to my room.
Like last night.
But we were on mushrooms last night, so maybe that had something to do with it. That Irishman, I tell you. Quite an influence.
I look up from my reverie and Jon is nowhere to be seen. I’m not about to venture from my hammock, so I start to wonder what the Israelis are talking about.
I know two of them. The guys. Besides Jon we’re all in our early twenties. Gal and Eron are fresh from mandatory military service, and I met them and Jon a couple days earlier in La Cieba, just a quick ferry ride from the island.
The third Israeli is the girl I never officially met. She’s been at the hostel for awhile now, at least a couple of days. I saw her at a different hostel back in Guatemala too, so I recognize her. Attractive people, Israelis, that’s hard to deny.
Cool accents too.
Goddamn I miss Emily.
Jon has resurfaced. He peers out the door, leaning heavily on the
frame. He looks at me.
"Diving man," he says, managing to keep his eyes open almost the whole time he speaks.
I nod. Diving indeed Jon. I think to myself as he sinks back into his room.


- - -
Elyk S. Von Ire is from Minneapolis. He is currently working on his first novel. He thinks that you are just great.

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Author: Elyk S. Von Ire

Contributor: Peter Baltensperger

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Black clouds hung from the night sky, forbidding tapestry traveling slowly through the darkness, obscuring a sickle moon that should have been floating somewhere. Sharp flashes of sheet lightning carved the horizon into ominous layers, electric javelins for the brooding night. The wolf man from the carnival in the fairgrounds sat at the edge of a forgotten pond in an ancient park, waiting for a rain that wouldn’t come, trying to dispel anxieties, nightmares. The clouds refused to yield.

Somewhere an empty train charged into a black tunnel, the engineer mesmerized by the meaningless presence of a minuscule light somewhere at a distant end. The wolf man cringed with his own troubled visions of incomprehensible endings, unfulfilled promises, scratching his mind for solutions, relief. He hadn’t come to the park to wait, even though he knew well enough that the waiting was a necessary part of a whole.

A silent marching band wound its way into the park from some inscrutable source, a troupe of clowns with invisible balloons in its wake. He could hear the flapping of their oversized shoes in the dry grass, wished he had a balloon of his own, an anchor for his confusion. The marching band began to weave tightening circles around the pond, hedging him into his solitude with its persistence. The clowns never let go.

He waded into the old pond to escape the inevitable noose, only to get sucked into the silty bottom of his own destiny. He flailed his arms to keep himself afloat, tore himself loose from the treacherous mire, howled his frustration at the invisible moon, yet all he could hear was the echo of his own voice. When he freed himself from the entrapment and floated on the churned surface to get his bearings, the band unwound itself from the pond and vanished into the darkness, leaving the balloons hovering on their strings.

As soon as they were gone, he walked out of the stale pond and shook his body to rid his thick fur of the water. He grabbed a handful of strings, to remember, and made his way back to the fairgrounds, the balloons following behind, his nightmares surrounding him like an irritating cloak. There was no point in waiting, not after the clowns. He had the balloons to get him through the night, keep his thoughts from floating away, remind him of what could have been. The night might have been different.

The bearded woman was the only one still awake, the light from her window drawing him into its spell. He could see her pacing back and forth in her trailer, plagued by her own shadows, monsters in dark corners. She let him in when he knocked on her door and he gave her one of the balloons, setting the others free to reclaim his space. She let the balloon float up to the ceiling and pulled him on her bed. He helped her dispel her monsters and she screamed her excitement into the room until his nightmares cracked and shattered to the floor.

It wasn’t until then that the lightning bolts tore the clouds apart and the rain began to gush down to the roar of thunder. The sharp drum solo on the metal roof of the trailer drowned out the moans of their passion as they found themselves in each other in a brief crack of light in the turbulent night. Then the unforgiving darkness engulfed them again, plunging them back into their shadows, obliterating what they had come to know.


- - -
Peter Baltensperger is a Canadian writer of Swiss origin and the author of ten books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He writes, and has been writing all his life, because he has to and loves to do it, and because it adds a significant dimension to his personal quest.

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Author: Peter Baltensperger

Contributor: Samantha Memi

- -
I got the call at four in the morning. “Steve, get up! We’ve got a job.” That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Some kid had got himself drowned in the river. Jed was on his way to the station. I’d have to meet him there. As sleep drifted away my first thought was Mary; I saw her running down the street towards me, felt her arms around me, her warm breath on my neck as she whispered “Who’s the most beautiful woman you know?”

Getting out of bed was the hardest part. My breath stung the air into cloudy reactions. Two hours before sunup the earth held the cold. What if some crazy kid was floating down the river? Hurrying now wouldn’t help him. I needed to fix the heating.

I had forgotten to buy coffee. I couldn’t function till at least two coffees. I found a pack of ready ground in the back of the cupboard. It was unlike Mary to have overlooked it, perhaps she had kept it for an emergency like this. I smoked my last two Luckies and set off for the station.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon as I arrived. The chopper was fuelled and ready. Jed explained that Davie couldn’t come because he had been fixing his old flat-bed Buick and it needed new piston rings. He said we would manage okay between us, I wasn’t so sure. We took the cargo hoist and tongs with the idea of winching him up as neither of us could go down and hook him.

When we got there we could see why they couldn’t get a boat to him; he was stuck on a rock in the middle of a spring torrent which had washed away most of the bank and left vicious peaks sticking up from the frothy water. Bruce was there already looking mighty important standing on the bank, his car behind him with the door open and the red light flashing. Jed kept going on about how the Packers beat the Bears and how Rodgers was the greatest quarterback since Favre. But all I heard was Mary clumping down the hall dragging her old-fashioned heavy case I had told her to throw away years ago, and her words ringing in my head, “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” Why did she scream like that? I had never hit her. What had gone so wrong to make her believe I would do that? Why did she leave? I told her I’d find a better job. I even promised to give up drinking.

The tongs wouldn’t hook in right. I hadn’t used them much before. It was Davie who did them mostly, but with his busted piston rings I supposed he deserved a couple of hours lie-in. I just wished I had stripped my motor down. It needed it. So did I.

Then the boy got caught. I tugged him tight and the tongs swung him up into the air. Everyone on the bank was waving, except for some guy staring into the water, close enough to get wet. Bruce radioed to bring the kid in, said the loner was his dad. Jed took us directly over him and I dropped the kid at his feet. Simplified identification I reckoned. Then we shot off. Jed had to get his daughter something for her birthday. I had to kill a Jim Beam.


- - -
Samantha Memi is a patisserie chef in London. Her recipes for a happy life can be found at http://samanthamemi.weebly.com/

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Author: Samantha Memi

Contributor: Miles Gough

- -
I just got back from the hospital and I’m too wired on pain killers to not want to go on about it. Don’t worry about me and the hospital, it was just five stitches on my forehead, not even a wound if you ask me. Toast Club got out of hand last night, but that is the kind of thing that happens at Toast Club. I heard that the guy from The Castle Cafe will have to wear an eye patch for a while, now that’s a wound. Maybe I should wear an eye patch, cause that shit’s cool.

Toast Club is the best after hours underground competition we cooks have done, and now, who knows if it will ever happen again. The idea is simplicity, which is usually not my thing, but this is extreme simplicity, so I’m with it.

Everyone always says that great chefs are better than anyone else, no matter what the hell they’re cooking. Some French dude just wants you to cook an omelet to see how badass you are. To our thinking, that’s too complicated for the test. If you say a great chef can make anything better, then they can make toast with butter better than your average schmuck. So me and a few real believers started Toast Club. We do it once or twice a month in the back room of Julio’s kitchen, the one with the craps game. We do it on days when dice ain't flying.

We have two contestants. They start at the same time. They are given two identical pop up toasters, four pieces of Wonder bread and an ounce of Land O Lakes butter. They have to make four pieces of toast and put on butter and the four judges figure out who is the supreme chef from the results. That’s pure. All the contestants can control is how long to toast the bread and how much butter to put on. And that’s all you need to figure out who should be swaggering big and long.

The judges are beyond reproach and yeah I am one. Can you think of anyone better qualified? C'mon. We been doing it for some time and the best chefs in town are almost always the winner. Sometimes a dark horse brings out an amazing win, like Noberto working the line at Altese, he is a genius with the butter, right amount every time. After he trounced all comers, he got himself a name and was promoted to Chef d’cuisine. This ain’t no joke if you were wondering.

This all gets us to last night. We were pretty wasted on kosher wine from this insanely elaborate bar mitzvah, so maybe we should have canceled, but the crowd was hungry for it. Of course we ran it. Miles who works at a upscale pizza joint out by the mall was one toaster and then there was Stan. God, you got to know Stan. Worked every place. Had style, but was an annoying shit. With that bad an attitude, its a wonder he doesn’t have a restaurant empire by now. He was a return combatant, had lost three times already and if I can remember, they weren’t even close. I think one time he even burned the toast, now that’s amateur.

The contest started with the pomp and circumstance of Lucas doing his MC routine. He did the stupid first rule of toast club, is don’t talk about toast club. For real, first rule of toast club, is that no one should stay that stupid fucking line anymore. But give it up to Lucas, he worked the crowd and we were ready. The toasting began and Miles was calm, doing a neat trick of warming the butter knife on the side of the toaster. Stan looked in his element, which kind of worried me, because he was never a relaxed dude. The toast popped and the buttering began. My favorite part, this is where the finesse happens. And then the presenting of the toast.

We bit into the offerings and Miles’s was good. This tasted like a fine piece of breakfast. I gave it high marks. Then I moved to Stan’s plate and holy shit that was fantastic. In all the times of Toast Club, this was the best goddamned piece of toast I ever ate. We had to give it up to Stan, though it pissed me off to do it.

Lucas ran over to Stan and raised his hand in victory. Stan had tried to move away but Lucas was too fast. Then Lucas’s eyes got all big. He took his hand back and looked at it and then smelled it. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “this guy spiked his butter. He has bacon fat on his finger.”

Can you believe it? He had come in with a finger full of bacon fat and when he was spreading the butter, he had put a little of it on each piece of toast. You know that no cook can resist bacon, so of course we were goners for it. That was a dirty trick and me and the other judges jumped the no good shit.

One thing for Stan, he can tussle in a fight. And he is smart enough to bring some back-up. He and his buddies brought their knives and it got nasty. Eventually, we made a lesson of him, but not without injuries. No one disrespects the sanctity of Toast Club.

At the ER, me and Lucas and a couple others were talking that maybe this was a sign to end Toast Club. If one asshole can play us that way, maybe we didn’t have the best contest devised. Next week, we’re going to debut Chip Club. Who ever can open the best bag of potato chips and pour the finest beer, wins. You should come, it’s going to be spectacular.


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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: Jon Wesick

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“Your death is the only thing you own,” the old woman began.

She was fat, so fat she took up the whole couch. Layers of flab coated her arms so they were as thick as a normal person’s legs. The blue skirt she wore was big enough to shelter a whole troop of Boy Scouts from the rain and her white blouse was stained from greasy fingers. The house stank of rotten food no doubt from the bones of several chicken roasts on the table. She would have eaten the whole world if only she could have found a way to make it hold still.

Neither I nor the others sitting on the dirty carpet in front of her wanted to be there, not Joe nor Dave nor Ray nor Lisa. We had only one thing in common. We were fifteen years old, the age our elders told us we had to complete this rite of passage.

Technically no one has to undertake the Runge Kutta initiation. I could have been like Randy Sullivan who endured whispers of “Randy the Pansy” and having his locker stuffed with dog crap all through high school. Indeed my harassment already started by none other than Principal Walters all big belly and skinny legs of him. The other week he walked right past Missy Oliver and Frank Dolan, who were practically giving each other hand jobs, to yank my arm off Wendy Rogers’ shoulder. It was clear that to have anything like a normal life I’d need to submit to the stupid ritual – the week-long fast, white robes, and gift of food to the witch sitting on the couch.

The old woman placed a pinch of powdered incense on a burning charcoal and waved her hands while reciting some gibberish in a language none of us understood. This went on for some time. How long I’m not sure since I was pretty light headed from fasting. At some point Ray giggled until Dave elbowed him in the ribs and told him to shut up. While the old woman sang, I pictured the meal I’d have as soon as this was done. A cheeseburger would be nice as would a big plate of spaghetti. Hell, even a grilled cheese sandwich would do just fine.

Finally the old woman’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped forward. When she straightened up, she seemed to be in some kind of trance.

“Who will be the first to accept your gift, your gift and your duty?” Her voice sounded different like a Russian in a bad movie.

Mouth in a smirk Ray moved forward and knelt before the woman.

“At fifty-four years old you will die of a sudden heart attack. You will feel no pain.”

Ray shook his head and returned to his place. Dave was next.

“In less than a year a robber will shoot you in the head and you will choke on your own vomit in the hospital.”

The old woman was on a roll. She told Joe he’d come down with dementia and die confused and alone while Lisa would have her throat slit after being gang raped by a bunch of meth-crazed bikers.

My turn. I moved close enough to count the black hairs on the old witch’s upper lip.

“An artistic death. Your body will be racked with cancer and you will not be sure if the disease or treatments is worse. You will die lying in your own filth.”

While the old woman chanted her final mumbo jumbo, I pictured myself bald and puking with a full colostomy bag swinging from my belly. After the ceremony was done, Lisa, Joe, Dave, Ray, and I gathered on the front porch. Everyone but Ray looked like they’d swallowed live sea urchins.

“Awe, you don’t believe that old witch. Do you?” Ray lifted his robe, dropped his pants, and pressed his butt cheeks to the old woman’s picture window. “Now, who wants to go to Artie’s and get a burger?”

Lisa, Joe, and Dave made lame excuses and left. I should have gone home like the rest of them. After all, my parents had plans for me now that I knew my fate. There was supposed to be a party with my mom’s friends and dad’s business partners. I could almost imagine the parents bragging about their kids and the long-winded lectures about hard work, responsibility, and the good grades needed to get into some MBA program. The thought of making small talk with all those hypocrites who wanted to know what I thought of the ceremony (but really didn’t) made me want to puke. Yeah, I should have gone home but didn’t. My parents’ plans could wait.


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Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published more than fifty short stories in journals such as Space and Time, Zahir, Tales of the Talisman, Blazing Adventures, and Metal Scratches. He has also published over two hundred fifty poems.

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Author: Jon Wesick