Contributor: Michael A. Withell

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“How do you do, Mr. Moo?” Silence. Bovine ignoramus? Nothing more than a mosquito to the majestic brown beast, squeeze and feel him burst between two bloodhungry fingers. Stop, shy away from the lair of the impotent lips; flaccid wet mouth stalking minus a moo (a coo) for how to you do?

“I'm very well, Mr. Moo”. Unregistered. “Care to join me in the tea room for my morning brew?” Nice tea there he's heard; not too bitter and you can admire your face in the convex face of the spoon (convex?) Shiny with no salty stain of sodium. (Lingering crumb hanging from the corner of its mouth).

Thudspreadgrasp. The gate was locked and its eyes remained empty; convex globes of light that only appeared to reflect, deflect, (direct) consciousness into the eyes of the beholder. Diffuse (defuse) the lock and let it roam free? Where could it go though? Certainly not for tea.

The man moved to leave it alone and oblivious to its own incarceration, maybe he'd come back home that way and share a quip and a sliver of cake. Forget the cake, the Doctor had mentioned fat and sugar with a distasteful glint (he'd end up calorie-counting all the way to the crematorium that fellow, just to prove his point.)

(Prod the statue with the stub of his stick, don't you see how it moves? Even in eternal snoreless sleep it dances to the same dull tune. It was the gateau that killed el gato, it didn't fall victim to its own curiosity).

Still silent.

“What would you say, Mr. Moo, if your lips could speak?” Cowmany calling Cowmany calling, I am talking to you about Cowmany; the lips of Lord Moo-Moo in an infinite stew. Maybe it would like some grass; a clump, a lump, a tuft taken from the top of the turf.

Poor Mr. Moo, his kingdom for a Horse indeedy, unable to flee from those Quadrupedal Quislings. Rejoice rejoice re-joyce, turncoat ersatz toff. Look at you, Mr. Moo, how flawlessly your coat shines! Hide that head in a leather hat perched above his eyes, good for warmer days and rainy Mays.

Chomp chomp feet stomp mouth full of pomp (maybe not, but grass between two front teeth and sagging lower lip. Unsatisfied). Mumbled apologies to the lowing animal, stomachs still rumble and mouth still tumbles against the putrefied clod.

Food for rats, not for a steedless, dethroned King.

The man sighed a single stuttered sigh and scratched an itch sneaking across the skin of his inner thigh. “Adieu Mr. Moo, Adieu and A pleasant day to you”. He turned away from the market mausoleum and eyed the man perched atop his stony plateau, his tie moving in sync with his dancing hand, a red tie in fact (red with black dots).

A fashion-conscious fascist.

Too hot for tea, the man wanted something colder (some ice would suffice). Wait. The smell of fried meat tickled the tiny hairs of his nostrils, causing him to turn to the right in a cartoon-like shuffle. Shoulder. Arms.

Shriek of a whistle pierced the morning sky. Over the top.

(Dead meat, bloated bodies hooked through the skin of their feet; blood pooling in the vacuum of their eyes.) Smell better with onions. Fried Onions? Garlic? Garlic keeps the dead at bay, steak through the heart.

“A burger”, he said to the meatman. “No onions”. The smell of onion pickles the tongue, petrifies the lips (unmissable smell for an unkissable hell). Burnt. The burger was burnt and the gristle took residence in the contours of his teeth, hiding itself from prods and pokes and the most pointless coercion.

Coercive voice danced above the vegetative smell; lower taxes, racial inequality and dilution camps all became the buzzwords of the day. Buzzbuzzbuzz, follow the beeline to auditory shelter; back to unhearing ears.

“I tell you, Mr. Moo. They don't listen, they never listen. They just stand there on their pedestals and preach to the inconvertible. Sure, they'll nod and agree but at the end of the day they won't share their taxes. Why would they?”

Silence, bovine Ignoramus.

“Yeah I know they get a good crowd. Christ, most people just come for the food I bet. Come for the chance to eat something other than cardboard and for the chance to look at the woman's ass standing in front of them. Apple of my eye. Cannibals, all of them.”

Shake of the head, cannibals. Eyes fixed on the burger, back to Mr. Moo.


- - -
Michael A. Withell is a short story and comic book author from Beverley, England. His first short comic will appear in the in-print 'Gods & Cattle' anthology in 2013. He spends his time playing with words and getting people to draw pretty pictures for him.

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Author: Michael A. Withell

Contributor: Jim Clinch

- -
Sully hauled on the line and swung the empty trap onto the deck. He cursed out loud. It was late, the water was rough and the stone crabs should be moving and filling up his traps. They weren’t. He re-baited with mullet, many years past noticing the stench, and tossed the trap back over the side.
He was alone. It was windy but clear and the moon provided enough light to work by. Normally he’d have his friend Carl along, but Carl’s cousin got arrested for cutting a man in a bar and Carl had to go to the Sheriff’s Office to deal with it. Sully pulled a pack of unfiltered cigarettes from his flannel shirt and lit one expertly in spite of the wind. The cigarette was slimed with fish guts from his fingers, but he didn’t notice and wouldn’t have cared if he did.
The small boat pitched and rolled as the outboard motor idled. He put her in gear and motored to the next marker, his keen night vision picking it out as it danced in and out of the swells.
This crab trap seemed heavier. After all these years, Sully could tell when he was hauling up a trap with some crabs in it. He got it to the surface and swung it into the boat, his motions practiced and efficient and automatic.
He stopped short. He stared at the empty trap.
Wedged in the opening was a pale, white human arm.
Sully was a good man living a hard life and he’d seen his share of ugliness, but the arm stuck in his crab trap made his stomach turn. He unconsciously put a fishy hand to his mouth and burned it on the half-finished Camel.
“Son of a bitch!” he said, flicking the cigarette over the side. The boat tossed and the wind whistled and the hull smacked the waves. Sully stood looking at a forearm and hand, severed just below the elbow. He couldn’t imagine how this got wedged in his trap.
The motor idled and the boat drifted and Sully stood transfixed. After a time, he shook his head as though coming out of a stupor. What the hell? What was he supposed to do now? He was understandably repulsed by the thing. He didn’t want to touch it and thought about picking up the whole trap and banging it on the gunwale until the gruesome thing dislodged and plopped back into the water. Then he felt embarrassed and ashamed for his squeamishness.
He sat down at the helm and skillfully lit another cigarette. Sully was not a smart man, but he was a moral man. That arm, he reasoned slowly, belonged to somebody. Could have been a shark attack or a boating accident, whatever. There was a good chance the owner was dead. If there were still fingerprints on it maybe the cops or the Coasties could figure out who it was and notify the family. That would be some consolation to them, at least. They’d have something to bury.
Sully finished his smoke and tossed the stub. He couldn’t stop staring at the arm; white in the moonlight, bloodless, the wound end looking like wet, shredded toilet paper. He felt enormously sad. He thought of his daughter, fourteen now and living with her mother. She was the only family he had. He worked at the auto shop all day and at night he caught stone crab for the local restaurants or hauled firewood and stumps for a guy. Anything to earn some extra money. He liked to buy her things, but it was often awkward. What do you say to a fourteen-year-old girl? In her young eyes he must seem ancient. The thought made him smile. Sully didn’t think being thirty-seven was ancient, but then again there sure were times when it felt that way.
Did the arm’s owner have kids? Parents? A loving wife? There’s so much that can go wrong out on the water. What had happened in this case? If the owner died, what was he thinking? Was it over quickly? Was he scared? Did it hurt?
The anchor light went out and that roused him. Damn, he thought. Now what? He looked forward and saw the red and green running lights were out as well.
Sully swore to himself as he reached for the headlamp hanging from the knob on the steering wheel. He slid the elastic headband on and flicked on the little LED light on his forehead. Down on his hands and knees he popped the small hatch to the battery compartment and went to work.
Sully’s boat had drifted a long way. The big container ship was downwind so Sully never heard it. The ship’s watchman didn’t see the small, darkened fishing boat until it was too late.
It was painful and frightening and not over quickly. He thought of his daughter. And, as is so often true, there was no moral to the story.


- - -
Jim Clinch is the author of the quirky mystery novel "Canterbury's Tale" (Amazon.com) and numerous short stories. He lives in Southwest Florida.

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Author: Jim Clinch

Contributor: Marc Nash

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Ein: The war hero was adorned like a Christmas tree. Gold piping and brocade ran down from his shoulder like poison ivy. Multicoloured banded ribbons of military decorations distended across his breast like chromatography analysis. One empty sleeve of his uniform lay against his chest just below, pinned in place by a medal. The silver branches of its star echoed the shape of the shrapnel that had originally caused his arm to be severed. He gave a salute with the hand of his lone arm.

Sechs: The Hindu deity had six arms. In one was the ubiquitous wheel, symbol of the perfect creation of the cosmos. While another carried a fearsome pronged trident. A third cupped a snake, seemingly slithering free from her grasp. A fourth had a lotus bud sitting in the palm of the hand, offered up to the heavens. The fifth countered it with a thunderbolt raised high as if it had issued from the sky and the goddess had snared it in her grip, saving her people. Or perhaps intending to hurl it herself, having snatched it from heaven's quiver. Her last hand gripped a conch shell, poised to be sounded, so as to summon the primordial creative energy of the world.

Sechzehn: The boat was a thing of beauty as it sliced through the water. Sixteen sculls in perfect periodicity, retracted into the stomachs of the oarsmen leaning back, before being repelled away from them again. The upright blades ducking and doffing the last possible moment, at the point which they break the water like a guillemot hunting from the surface. Like the delicate hand movements of an Indian dancer clacking her narrative rhythms. And yet this sixteen limbed beast is more about rhythmic power than grace. The cox with his hands to his exhorting mouth, twitching like the two antennae around the maw of an insect, while its centipedal limbs flared out as the thoracic body of the boat was propelled along. One of the rowers catches a crab and is forced to raise his appendage above his head, perpendicular to the rest of the limbs. As if he had snapped the bone at the elbow.

Acht: The octopus was going ahunting and afishing. Two of its tentacles curled their suction cups around a rock in order to anchor it. It extended a third outwards, wiggling it to make ripples in the water to give the impression that it was bait. A fourth arm was surreptitiously doing some surveillance of its own, monitoring the field around the lure-limb. A fifth arm shot out to grab the victim once it came into range, and the sixth clamped itself around the fifth and reeled its brother back towards its mouth to inject it with venom. The seventh arm prepared to amputate itself as a sacrifice, should the octopus be disturbed while in the act of eating. The last arm wiped a morsel that was clinging to the outside of its maw with the gesture of full satisfaction, like a diner might use the napkin at the end of his meal.

Vier/Zwei: The boy stood with his arms crossed over his chest, each hand hugging its opposite shoulder as if he were in a straitjacket. The man craned his arms out to bid his son into their embrace. The boy didn't move. The man wiggled his hands beckoning to him. The boy stayed held in place. The man took a step forward, his arms still extended, like the prongs of a forklift truck. Sensing no rebuff, the man chanced another forward stride. His face cracked into a lop-sided smile, trying to accentuate the consoling nature of his gesture. The boy seemed to slip further inside his own lost folds, even though there was no discernible outward motion. The man crept forward with slow, unbroken steps until he could envelop the boy. He slotted his arms around the boy's shoulders, but the latter's own arms remained resolutely pinned to himself. "Come on son, come to Dad". The boy spat at him and in the reflexive recoil towards his sullied face, the boy ducked and escaped the older man's flailing arms.


Zwei/Null: The frame of the bow was twitching with the pent up force of the string pulling it. His hand steady and steadying at the perfect centre of the wood. His other arm was perpendicular, to them both, as it drew back the wire to where it caressed the stubble of his face. His jaw was being grazed as the cable oscillated with the tension it contained within, exactly mirroring the tendons and ligaments in his arm which were burning with the exertions of containing such elastic power.
One arm precisely cupped the barrel along its entire length as if they were two entwined serpents. The other cocked at the elbow, jutting away from the man's sleek prone form, as his finger palpated the harsh curve of the trigger.
Right arm telescoped out in front of him, the left wrapped up and over the metal tube resting on its shoulder. Like he was carrying harvested wheatsheafs. But the metal tube was like a third limb, his heaped up rear arm like a chancre, an outgrowth of grizzled, diseased tissue. He pressed the trigger and was rocked back by the unseen fourth arm, the trail of fiery smoke that shot out behind him. He released his forward hand from gripping the RPG and brought his hand over his eyes to peer at his target ablaze. Then he swung the tube across his shoulders and casually threaded both hands over it as if he were tied to it like a condemned man as he strode off back into the mountains.


- - -
Marc Nash is a writer of difficult fiction, with an emphasis on language. He has published three novels and two collections of flash fiction on Kindle. He is currently looking to collaborate with a designer and scratch DJ to make a video of one of his flash stories.

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Author: Marc Nash

Contributor: Gavin Wilson

- -

While waiting for his girlfriend he noticed the slim, nondescript volume on the library shelves. As he had little to occupy his time, or his mind, his hands made a decision for his brain and reached out for entertainment. Not really concentrating, he flicked idly through looking for pictures. He wasn’t normally much of a reader, preferring a good comic, so it was some moments before his brain, preoccupied with other thoughts, realised the pages in front of him were blank.

He stopped and, concentrating more fully now, opened the book at random, finding an earlier entry in what looked like a diary.

…Adam finished his toast, marmalade as usual, put on his red jumper and left the house, forgetting his library card which lay on the desk in the hall…

Dry mouthed, Adam looked at his jumper, checked his wallet for his library card, which was missing, and looked ahead to the most recent entry.

Words appeared on the page as he watched, magically inking themselves into literary existence. His mouth opened in amazement as he read the most recent line.

… having waited half an hour for his girlfriend, she finally turned up with an armful of books…

He shut the small volume with a snap. He’d been there for ten minutes: the book was twenty minutes ahead of time. He knew what was going to happen in the future.

Looking around, he noticed a comfy looking chair in the corner and sat heavily on the cushioned leather. Once settled he re-opened the book to look into the past. Everything written there was an exact copy of what had happened in his life, but only spanned a few weeks of time. It was a slim book after all, he thought. He shut the book again and sat, deep in thought with the book held loosely in one hand.

Did he want to know what happened in the future? Did he really want to spend his life looking twenty minutes ahead to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid; a slave to the immediate future? If it was written down, could he change it anyway?

A myriad of questions, possibilities and unknowns flashed through his brain as he sat staring into space.

~

“Adam?”

He smiled as he became aware of her. She stood nearby, a large armful of books in her hands.

“You found something to read?” she said, a puzzled look on her face as he struggled for words. He took a deep breath and seemed to come to some sort of decision.

“Nah, you know I prefer a good comic,” he replied.

He stood up, kissed her and smiled wryly, making sure he slotted the book back on the shelf where he’d found it. As he pushed it back into place, he turned away, putting his arm around Anna, and so missed the fleeting appearance of a face in the leather cover of the book. The soundless scream formed in the patina went unnoticed as the book slid back between its fellows on the shelf.

The Librarian watched them leave.

Reaching up with long fingers, he pulled the book from the shelf and looked at the still screaming soul trapped in the book as it raged within the confines of the spell. He opened the rear cover and added another mark to the tally, the ink fading once he’d added the most recent line.

The humans constantly surprised him, but one day, the trap would be sprung and a second soul would be trapped inside the book, releasing the power he craved.

Until then, all he could do was wait; quietly. The Librarian was good at waiting…

…sssh!


- - -
Although trained as a geologist, Gavin has spent most of his life buried in the pages of other worlds. With thoughts of choosing a mid-life crisis, he has now taken a literary route and fills blank pages with worlds of his own construction.

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Author: Gavin Wilson

Contributor: Michael A Perry

- -
“The last time I cried watching the news,” he says, looking over her shoulder at the open cupboard. “The last time was Katrina. The nine inch color tv. The last days of analog. Still have it in my basement. Useless now.”

“And this time?” she asks.

“50 inch plasma. You ask me, it seems less real. Too perfect. Too pretty. You know I used a fork to get reception on that old thing.”

He stands up and walks over to the cupboard. He closes it.

“Actually, sobbing is a better word to describe it. I sobbed. My wife, she didn’t say a word. But the look she gave me. Man, she always knew what to say without saying it.”

“Did you sob this time?” She clarifies. He is looking up at the ceiling. A light is out. She had noticed this when they first sat down.

He answers with his eyes.

Outside she can still see the fires. They are far away. At night, it seems you never get away from them. And when you live in a desert, there is nothing to put them out.

“Did you turn it on knowing what to expect?” she asks. “I mean, with Katrina, I just turned on the tv and there it was. An old woman waving on a rooftop. Fuckin’ unreal.”

He smiles. And he looks young again. It erases lines and years. Wonderful what a carefully placed f-bomb could do.

“I smelled it before anything. Then I opened up my browser. Then the tv.” He walks to the closet and grabs a light bulb. Standing on the kitchen table in his hiking boots, he changes the light. She lights a cigarette.

“Before all of this, I would never had considered this again,” she says, looking around for something to ash in. “But everything is just sitting out there. It’s not really looting with so few around.”

“What are we doing?” he asks. He voice is strained. “This conversation. Why, in this of all worlds, are you talking around it? Why can’t you just ask me?”

He jumps off the table. At his age, and he still jumps. Suddenly she remembers complaining to dad about being dragged along to his games. The star point guard.

“And do we just smoke inside people’s houses now? Is that our response?” he says. But he is not mad. Not at her.

Outside a light flares in the east. God, another one. They will hear it soon. It has been almost an entire week. She was beginning to think they might have stopped. The sound. Seconds later, a slight rumble. Her ash falls to the floor. She rubs it into the carpet with her bare foot.

“Who carpets their kitchen, Alex? And yes, that is what I do,” she says, exhaling smoke directly at him. “And I’d drink if you had anything decent in your fridge.”

Alex leaves the kitchen, muttering. She considers following. Before she can move she hears glass shattering. Then a string of expletives. Then more glass. But he cried for Katrina, she thinks. Her sensitive little brother. He would need her, and so she made it to his door after all this time, during the end of everything. She couldn’t make it to the funeral, but she was here now. And what she had done to get here. She couldn’t think of that. Not now. Not here.

“Kate,” he calls from the other room.

She tosses her cigarette into a cold cup of coffee left on the counter, probably days old, and follows his voice.

“Here,” he says. “And careful for the glass. But look.”

It’s the 9 inch television. Mustard Yellow. The one they watched the Jetson’s on when they were kids, eating colored cereal and drinking apple juice.

“Where is the fork?” she asks.

“With the rest of the silverware,” he says. “She took it with her. The fork. A
month before all this happened. We tried calling you. We always did. But…A blown tire, they say. That’s it. A blown tire. Her Hyundai veers left, jumps a curb and runs into a flatbed stacked with re-bar. Impaled. Left breast and right eye. Pinned her to the seat. It’s all so impossible. You know she survived. That’s the true horror. They moved her and the re-bar to the ER. And then they tell me she died moments before I made it there? Why tell me that?”

He starts to laugh. She reaches for another cigarette.

“She was taking it to have it polished. The silverware. Who even does that? And all of this?” he says, gesturing toward the windows, the fires, the yellow sky. “I don’t cry for this. This is a welcome distraction.”


- - -
Michael A Perry is an assistant professor in the department of English at Rockford College. He teaches creative writing, African American literature, and popular culture studies. In summers and on breaks, he turns his attention to fiction writing.

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Author: Michael A Perry

Contributor: Christopher T Garry

- -
Nothing but the soft hum of the ship's electronics accompanied Michael as he lay dreaming again. The crew's quarters were in almost perfect darkness. Glasses, water, a pen, a pill wrapper and a communicator all individually reflected the dim pinpoint lights that could be seen in the bedside console. He dreamed as he had every night since leaving the colonies months ago. In his bunk he was perfectly still with only his eyes moving from side to side under his lids.

#

In his dream he was looking for someone. Michael stepped from the train and looked about the platform uncertain of where exactly the boy had gone. Steam obscured his view of the platform, the train yard and industrial district beyond. The men were all in hats and there were a few women bundled against the cold. Soldiers lined the edge of the platform, chatting amongst themselves, keeping wary eyes on the crowd with tired, lined faces. Clearly no child was going to be trailed directly in such a disarray of gray and brown dreariness.

He drifted toward the terminal with the rest of the people. He knew his job and he knew the station well. As long as the boy had no idea he was being followed he could safely assume that the child would follow a predictable path off the train, out of the station and into the city. He knew where he lived, where he went to school. He knew the disposition of his family and where his usual haunts were during the short daylight hours of winter in the village that they had left behind. What he did not know was why the boy had broken his routine and taken the train here to Sterngarten with such apparent urgency.

The city was a transportation hub along the eastern borderlands, home to few but the most resolved artisans and tradesmen. There were factories, warehouses and shipyards along the riverfront. Most of the populace here were transient following private agendas, working for a few months and then moving on. No one remained attached for very long during wartime. Work was long and hard and dangerous and then bombs would fall setting back progress. Workers would sort through the rubble, rebuild, retool and start again. It was a metropolitan anthill that would suffer any amount of destruction merely to shift and restore itself in a few days to a new shape but with the same purpose. Survive and supply the war.

There was no reason for the boy to come into the city. Children under 13 were forbidden from work. There were no schools or homes left, no parks or cultural centers since they had stopped bothering to rebuild them. Food was scarce here and most lived underground at night to avoid the air raids. The trains brought more workers, building supplies from the countryside, food and news of the progress of the war.

Michael felt strange and began to feel more urgent. He spotted the boy finally, standing near the cab stand staring straight at him with set resolution in his face. Not angry but not childlike either. The boy suddenly became transparent showing the traffic behind right through his body. In a moment he was gone. Michael stood in the mad rush of people with isolation crowding around him.

#

The dim pinpoint lights of the bedside console reflected in the boy's eyes as he watched his pursuer sleep.


- - -
Born in Illinois CTG lives outside Seattle with family and pets. If he were born at another age perhaps he would stare blankly at the sunset as he wipes mastodon blood from his chin, tossing the bone aside.

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Author: Christopher T Garry

Contributor: Ken Poyner

- -
It is to be the execution of someone. A crew of workmen have been building the fatal platform for nearly a month. Good government work. No benefits, due to it being a temporary job – but each could apply for a full time position, if they stand out and someone retires. We might see one of these platform builders inspecting imported fruit, or performing same-day civically approved surgeries.

It is to be the execution of someone. A small start up company has been gluing flyers to trees and telephone poles, and was putting them into mailboxes – until one of the constables told them that mail boxes were for mail and they would have to put a stamp on anything they stuffed into anyone’s mailbox. So they left the excess on car windshields, dumped a sheaf of them into the town fountain, folded them into the coin slots of parking meters.

It is to be the execution of someone. To mark the event, the hardware store is putting up a twenty percent off sale, and will give forty percent off for stock more than a year old. The grocery store next door is giving a flat five percent off if you bring in a receipt from the hardware store showing your twenty percent discount, and swear there is nothing in the transaction you might try to return. That grocery store has been a good neighbor for thirty years, and we need corporate citizens like that.

It is to be the execution of someone. I keep looking for the bars and restaurants to announce two dollar drafts, or to take up the peanuts and put out the mixed nuts: the ones you can go fishing for cashews in. A few barkeepers keep coming to their establishments’ front doors and looking both ways along the street, fixing the execution structure against the time of day and the parting of the light. If enough people are out and about who will be thirsty at full price, the alcohol managers will not be inclined to give an inch. And if the crowd is too small, they won’t give in either and let idlers toss back, in glasses that still have to be washed, all the profits in alcohol. No. The crowd has to be just right. They look for shadows gathering in alleys, for lone patrons where couples should be.

It is to be the execution of someone. The whole month’s worth of preparations comes down to tonight. Jobs and sales will be terminated. Discounts will roll back. The talk will turn again to weather; which girls becoming women sway with a more comfortable look; speculation on when we can get up enough tax money for another execution; and what the executioner does during his long time off; and who might have seen him patronizing businesses across county lines.

It is to be the execution of someone. Enough people will gather that we will look like an audience and not just a crowd. Women will wear gloves. Children will be told not to run too far. The librarian will be out to show too much bosom, just to prove she is not a stereotype. I will be watching. I could read that book like Braille. And I will count the number of children just because I like counting and I don’t like children.

It is to be the execution of someone. I am going to wait right here, on the corner left open forty-five degrees off center from the gut of the execution platform. I will wait as though I were wrestling with the librarian and fearlessly holding back - eyes bulging, pressurized forward - my already secretly sprung surging gift of children. I will be taking in the full practical view when the executioner strides square shouldered out, spins once to the applause of the perfectly tuned crowd, and then, with one hand enrolled and his business finger pointed like the bluff of a carpenter’s nail, the executioner says: you!

It is to be the execution of someone. Skip, and let your heart get ahead of itself. Taste the benefits of industry, for now, on your tongue. Slap your thigh and think of giddy nights with drunken girls and the wind in your testicles and nothing, not even the disharmoniously magical, beyond your control. Think that there is nothing beyond my control. Believe that out of the remains of the execution platform tonight there will be firewood to gather, scrap that might patch a porch or lengthen a scarecrow or surprise in inexplicable ways a wife. Let everyone make the most of it.


- - -
Ken Poyner's recent e-book, "Constant Animals", 42 brief fictions, is available at the usual e-book retail sites. His previous two books of poetry are out of print. He loiters menacingly in the dark corners of the web.

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Author: Ken Poyner

Contributor: Carly Berg

- -
I wasn’t allowed in my friend Journey’s house because my parents thought the Hoolihans
were trash. They had six kids, and two of their girls had kids of their own. They all crammed into an old rent house. Her parents were always drunk and out of everything they needed. It was the
funnest place in the world, though.
Dad said, “An orchid will not bloom in a garbage dump, Susan.” Mom said, “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you want people to think you’re a tramp?” Even Miss. Selena, our maid, tsk-tsked at me.
To other people my mom was tinkly and gay and we laughed
ourselves sick listening to her on the phone. “She is tinkling!” I tittered. “She is gay!” Journey screeched. Well, that made me a little mad,
that’s my mother.
Miss Zita closed her window when we stopped at her magazine stand after school, ever since I talked Journey into showing Miss Zita her new red bra.
Journey accidentally pulled her bra up too, and showed her boobettes. Miss Zita turned bright purple. She said, “You are not-a nice girls!” and slammed her window shut.
We made prank calls there before that. I did “Is your refrigerator running?” and Journey did “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” And then I called again and said “bitch,” and hung up. Journey said “fuck you,” on her turn. But after Miss Zita started shutting her window, we
got in deeper.
The first time, we looked through a Penthouse magazine. The grown men’s things made me queasy. But later Journey’s sister said don’t worry. Penthouse didn’t photograph normal men, only Guinness World Record holders.
The next time, we swiped Chiclets, a pack each. We ran all the way to Journey’s house and didn’t go back to Miss Zita’s for a while.
We had more things planned, which we wrote up on a chart and signed. I didn’t think we’d really nick the bottle of T.J. Swan (“for the night people” the commercial said). You couldn’t just get a whole bottle of wine out of the cooler and walk down the street with it. Cigarettes would be hard to take, too because they were kept behind the counter.

#

I picked out a Mad Magazine, a Coke and cheese popcorn.
“Can I bum a quarter?” Journey already had the Lick-a-Stick in her hand. The big pack with three different flavors, even.
She mooched too much. “You have to tell Miss Zita, ‘Zita pita, smell my feeta.’”
Journey smiled, all on one side of her mouth. Once I told her she smiled like a Mafia guy, which made her happy. She banged on the glass and shouted “Miss Zita pita. kiss my feeta. Open your window this instant, or you’ll be sorry.”
Meanness filled the area.
The window slid open. Journey, charged up from talking smart, snatched the two dollars out of my hand and flung them at Miss Zita. She said, “You get off your rectum and get me my change.”
Miss Zita seemed small. She collected the bills, keyed our stuff into the register, and handed Journey the change with shaky hands.
I picked up the bag. “Come on, Journey. That’s enough.”
Journey spit on the sidewalk. She walked with her fist on her hip like she was big stuff because she had scared an adult.
“You didn’t do it right,” I said. “You were supposed to say ‘smell’ my feet. You said ‘kiss’ my feet.”
“So? You didn’t say anything at all.”
“I could have. I’m not afraid.”
“Well?” she said, “Do it, then.”
My throat went dry. “This Coke isn’t cold. When I pay twenty-five cents for a bottle of soda, I expect the goddamned thing to be cold!” I said. “I’ll handle this.”
I rapped on the window three times, sharp.
Journey yelled, “Zita pita, you open the window this instant.”
“Open it!” A little crazed, I knocked with the glass Coke bottle, and didn’t notice when Miss Zita slid the window open.
Her nose gushed blood. Blood stained her blouse.
We ran.

#

Ms. Selena had just served the pork tenderloin and left out the back when the doorbell rang. My dad muttered something about having to get the damn door himself and put down the wine he was pouring.
He came back and motioned me to follow him to the foyer, where a policeman waited.
“Susan, were you at Miss Zita’s today with Journey Hoolihan?”
The walls swayed. “Um, yeah.”
My father nudged me. “That’s ‘yes, sir,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve just been to the hospital. Miss Zita was assaulted with a bottle. Her nose is broken.”
My mother said, “She hit that old woman in the face? With a bottle? Officer, I have told this child repeatedly those people were trouble.” She gazed out the window. The police car was parked in front of the house for the entire neighborhood to see.
My father said, “Susan will not have any further contact with the Hoolihan girl.”
“She is being held at juvenile hall anyway, sir. I expect she’ll be staying for a while. You’re a lucky girl, Susan, to have parents who care.”
“Yes, sir.”
My mom watched the cruiser pull away from the curb, her hand over her mouth.
Dinner was quiet except for the clinking of silver on china.


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Carly Berg's always behaves when out in public. Her stories appear in several dozen journals, including PANK, Word Riot, and Bartleby Snopes, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well. She is currently at work on a book of flash stories.

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Author: Carly Berg

Contributor: Aaron Levy

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Before I went to the farm, I was fat as fat can be. My friends called me heavy, my parents said I was physically challenged, but the monkey bars told me the truth – you be fat, man. I was five years old and just over 500 lbs., none of it was muscle, but my family took me everywhere like a rabbit’s foot and I loved being out in the public with my bathing suit. I was fat happy, a happy fat and blind fat, fat as fat can be kind of fat.

Like a brand new house, fat as a house I was, a house that had no upstairs cause the fat in my legs had squashed my cartilage so that my knees were just fat bone on fat bone. A house that had only one room, a ranch house with only one room and no uncomfortable corners to stuff away my fat ass. Sometimes you couldn’t see the middle of the room because I was in the way.

Like fat that smiles, smiling giggling saucey-saucying, ignorant fatty fat.

Like the fat guy that is so fat chicks dig him and he squeezes the better part of his fat into a different lovely lady each night except for the Sabbath when he rests because he’s got fatty asthma, so he just rests on a giant chair and replays the week on his widescreen t.v.

And I had so many friends because everybody wants to be around the fat guy of course because the fat guy has the best laugh in the world and my pants were so big that my friends fit in my pockets and they could eat the leftover crumbs, the sugar coated lint, the cans of Spam that were just there. And all my friends and I would talk about going on a big fat diet, but we decided to put it off because we were all so fat together. Always full. Bloated…Happy.

And now, because I went to the Fat Farm, a place where the animals are so skinny they disappear before you can pet them, I am so, so, I am so skinny.

It’s like my mother said it would be, that people are not against you but for themselves. Trust only your thinning family she would say to me over a plate lettuce leaves.

I am skinny like a bone inside another bone inside another bone inside a cartilage.

Skinnier than the popsicle stick on a Weight Watchers fudgical.

Skinnier than the slip of me you just filed under miscellaneous.

Skinnier than a pregnant pause.

I’m so skinny, secrets are telling secrets about me behind my thin back. I’m so skinny, poetry slips through my fingers until only the punctuation sits in my bony palms.

I’m so skinny that I want to call you, my old old friends, but I don’t have the stamina to push all of the buttons.

I’m so thin that my pants look good on me, but my colon paints a different picture.

I used to be fat, fat as a horse, no, fatter than a fat horse that can’t even sleep standing up, and now…the only thing I want is a thick piece of cow, but my stomach is stapled shut and I am lonely.


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Aaron Levy currently teaches creative writing and English Education at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, GA. His award-winning plays have been produced nationally and internationally, and published by Dramatic Publishing and Smith & Kraus. Recently he has had or will have shorter work appear in Eleven Eleven, Black Heart Magazine, The Kennesaw Review, and Apollo's Lyre. You can reach him at alevy2@kennesaw.edu, and soon visit his new website at www.aaronlevy.net.

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Author: Aaron Levy

Contributor: Gavin Wilson

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15th March 2012 – Laboratory Diary of Dr Mark J Solomon

This will probably be my final entry in my lab diary for this experiment. We have found the cure; the cure for all known diseases and poisons!
After decades of research and experimentation, I have proved that the universal antidote was possible with a simple demonstration. I confirmed it in front of the panel, by the simple expedient of injecting myself with a variety of horribly virulent diseases and poisons that should kill any normal man within days; or, in the case of some of the poisons, within minutes.
I sat happily in my environmentally safe cell for a week, and then sent out blood samples for checking. They were clean. Barring accident and old age, it would appear that I am near invulnerable.


18th March 2012 – Personal Diary

I am invulnerable, sadly I am not infallible. There was, as with all things, an unforeseen consequence that I need to write down for the future – if there is one. There is always a chance, however slim, that someone will need to make use of this.
I have made a mistake.
Well several, but the compound error of all of this is that I have doomed humanity. In my state of ego, and massive belief that I had cured the world, I allowed many of my colleagues to be caught up in the supposed majesty of the situation, and allowed them to inject my serum. We danced around and drank poisons together, reveling in the fact that none of us instantly dropped to the ground dying in an orgy of agony. Drunk on our own success, we madly injected ourselves with everything from common flu viruses to the Ebola virus, rummaging through our stock of virulent disease vials like an alcoholic given the keys to the liquor cabinet.
The next day we all woke up grinning.
Yesterday however, I awoke to horror.
Everyone I’d known, with the exception of a few, died horribly as the serum mutated with the viruses we’d injected, spawning a rampaging virulent plague that appears to have moved with the speed of the rising sun to infect the world.
With the exception of a few…
I had only tested the virus on myself. It was specific to my DNA, but there are some people who share a form of my DNA. It's not an exact match though, which has caused other unforeseen side effects.
I can hear the movements outside.
My children are coming home.
Unrecognisable now, they are searching for food as humans have searched for generations. They are a new form of human, but seem to have retained some vague sense of belonging. The table is set for tea. The places are set with cutlery, glasses and side plate: the door is open and the kids are coming home for some food.
Welcome back kids, the ketchup is on the table.
The meal is ready and just needs to put down his pen.


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I'm a writer, a reader, and producer of odd little short stories and various other pieces of random fiction.

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Author: Gavin Wilson