Contributor: Gary Clifton

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Hillary Washington had been Mrs. Clarence Washington until two years earlier. Then cancer took Clarence.  In a neighborhood where ninety-eight percent of the population was terrified of the other two percent, she was unafraid - Clarences's.32 still lay in a kitchen drawer.  She opened the door to a young white man.  The pirate-like bandana atop his head was probably a costume - it was Halloween.  But no treat was involved.  Her trick reward was rape, murder, arson.
    Homicide sent out Detectives Harper and Garnet.  Red Harper, in Homicide since before electricity, with a thin rim of red hair surrounding plenty of bald head, was big, tough, and never without a nasty cigar polluting the atmosphere.  Margaret "Maggs" Garnet, new in Homicide, was leggy, black, beautiful.   A graduate of Texas Tech via a track scholarship, she could outrun and then kick the ass of most men they encountered.
    As they examined Mrs. Washington's crime scene, a patrolman caught Harper's eye.  "Neighbors report a white guy wearing a plaid doo-rag ran from the scene."
    "White boy on foot around Fair Park shouldn't be hard to find," Maggs said. "Sure a fine day to look," she gestured to the beautiful autumn day.
    So as cops should, they cruised the area.  Harper, driving missed the light at the Grand Avenue entrance to the Cotton Bowl.  Three U.S. Marines, splendid and ram-rod straight in their dress blue uniforms were manning a "Dollars for Wounded Warriors" booth on the sidewalk.  A clown, presumably another Marine, stood ringing a bell.  Maggs winked at an African American Marine who was movie star handsome and bigger than Harper.  The kid smiled back.  
    They hadn't driven two blocks when Maggs shouted: "There, Harper."  In half a heartbeat, Maggs had bailed out and was full bore after a greasy white kid with a plaid bandana tired around his head.
    With Harper following in the car, to Maggs's chagrin, the kid went over a fence on Grand avenue and disappeared into the vast housing project behind.  She'd lost him.  When Harper puffed up, Maggs waved a shoe.  "Tennis shoe?" Harper said.
    "Christ, Harper," It's a Michael Jordan...costs two hundred.  Somewhere back in there is a white guy wearing a damned rag on his head and one shoe," she gestured, "...who just might have Mrs. Washington's piggy bank in his pocket."  They radioed a description of the suspect to all units.  Another hour's search failed to find their man.

        They'd just dropped the Jordan at the crime lab behind Parkland Hospital when dispatch advised them to look into an assault victim wearing one Jordan who'd just been ambulanced into Parkland.  In the ER they found, Jim Bob Griffin, white male 20, with two convictions for assault and robbery.  He had sustained six broken ribs, two broken arms, a fractured jaw, and a concussion   But, he'd retained plenty of mouth.  "Damned clown jumped me, them some others tried to kill me.  Ain't did shit."

    Then, E.M.T.'s wheeled a clown down the hallway, closely followed by three uniformed Marines.  The clown lay face down, a gash to his left shoulder blade.  "That's the crew from Far Park," Maggs said.  Besides the patient on the cart, the kid she'd flirted with was bleeding from his right hand.
    Harper turned back to Jim Bob's gurney.  "Mean ol' clown beat up on you, huh.  Maybe we just found this bully.  Shoulda picked on the Easter Bunny.  Heard he's a real whoosh."
    "Kiss my ass, pig.  Ast the sumbitch for a little change and he done this to me.  Am I gonna die?"
    "Absolutely, dude, and with any luck at all that would be today."   
    A uniformed officer walked in, holding up a stubby switchblade in a plastic bag.  "This jerk-off thought he could take on the Marines with a Barlow knife," he grinned.  "He...uh finished second.  After they kicked the dog shit out of him he ran in front of a D.A.R.T. bus."  He leaned close to Harper and Maggs.  "But them kids did all the damage...the bus just glazed him."
    Harper stepped into the curtained cubicle where a physician was stitching up the clown's back.  The patient was lean and muscular with a tattoo:  Semper Fi  on his forearm.  "You guys have to report this?"
    "Yessir," all four snap-answered as one.
    Harper sat down and wrote out the following report:  "Suspect, Jim Bob Griffin,  suspect in a rape, murder, arson earlier in the day, attempted armed robbery of U.S. Marine Wonski who improvised, adapted, and took evasive action.  Suspect fled, ran into the path of a D.A.R.T.  bus and sustained injuries requiring hospitalization at Parkland.  If suspect survives, he will be charged with armed robbery, assault, and  damaging a city owned vehicle."
    As he finished, his cellular rang.  He spoke briefly and hung up.  "DNA on the Jordan matches Mrs. Washington and ol' Jim Bob both," he grinned at Maggs.  "Hey, Jim Bob," he called into the cubicle where Griffin lay on a cart.  "Your Halloween treat is a needle and a three-poison-juice cocktail."
    Maggs, who'd peered over Harper's shoulder as he wrote, said:  "Only just injuries, huh?  Gotta contingency plan if this dirt-bag dies."
    "Haul the carcass to the dog pound?" he rolled the cigar stub.  He tossed a carbon of the report on the injured clown's gurney, then followed Maggs out.  As they cleared the door, Harper fished a fresh cigar from his pocket.
    "Trick or treat officers," the clown called behind them.


- - -
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over thirty short fiction pieces published or pending with online sites. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: Shannon Barber

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“I had my hands around your throat last night while you were sleeping.”

I’ve been watching you all morning. I watched you shave and carefully put on your blue shirt with white French collar and cuffs, your matching tie. Now I’m looking at your face while you give me one of your ever-patient smiles.

“I’ll be that was a whopper of a dream.”

I try to laugh and you kiss me on the cheek, then the nose then so tenderly on the lips that I want to punch you in the face.

“Don’t forget to take your pills.”

You don’t understand and I don’t have the words to tell you. What I meant to say was that last night while you were sleeping I turned over and looked down at you and put my hands around your throat, I felt your pulse under my thumb and the only thing I wanted to do was squeeze. I wanted to squeeze until you came awake clawing at my hands trying to pull them off.

I wanted to watch the red dots bloom in your eyes, I wondered if your hyoid bone would break. I held my own breath and had to crawl out of bed, go out to the couch and masturbate furiously until I came three or four times, by the end tears were streaming down my cheeks because I felt ashamed. Beneath my shame at my arousal I felt burning lust.

Since my body began to fail I smolder inside. When I tried to tell you, when I tried with tears in my eyes and an I.V in my arm, you took my free hand and said it was cold. You said you understood that I must feel so helpless and how much you wished you could give me the strength to express my rage.

I’m getting better. I wander around in my pajamas, every morning you kiss me and tell me not to forget my pills. You just have no idea what is happening to me.

You don’t know that some days when the light of mid afternoon is filtering into the kitchen that I pull the huge sharp knife out of the block, I take my jammies off and press the cold metal to my nipple. I test the edge there, just enough to make the flesh pucker and tingle. I let the neighbor you hate watch.

You don’t know that today I will do this, I am already watching the angle of the light on the floor because I’m shaking so hard, I'm grinning and wet. So wet.

Something happened during the long pale blue hours in the middle of the night at the hospital. I spent all those hours hooked to IV’s, monitors, and the catheter I still have nightmares about. I’m not sure what it was that changed, perhaps the veneer of being nice or decent just wore away.

I had held onto this belief that I was not the kind of human being who could do something destructive simply to be destructive. Somewhere deep inside that wakeful unconscious I found my violent molten core. The nurses gave me stress balls when I couldn’t sleep and I would lay in bed squeezing and squeezing, my hands got strong while the rest of me was dying.

Eventually I realized that something in me had changed and would never be the same. After many long nights, surreptitious masturbation and violent fantasies, I am calm. I feel real.

I shuffle back into the kitchen and look at the counter where you thoughtfully put a new tin of my favorite tea next to my pile of pill bottles. You have been so solicitous and kind through all of this bullshit, nightly I want to murder you in your sleep.

I can hear your voice in my head as I make myself lunch and take my pills. The sun is almost to the right spot on the floor and as I rinse my dishes I stare at the knife in the block.

Maybe today I will draw blood, maybe today I will feel human.


- - -
Shannon Barber writes things, crochets things and drinks a lot of hot beverages. She also is very interested in pie.

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Author: Shannon Barber

Contributor: Marie Chavez

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I have a friend who is a storyteller. Which is, in my opinion, just a nice way of saying he's a liar. The trick to being a convincing liar, I’ve heard, is to believe the story you’re telling. I always wanted to believe the stories he told. The temptation, I think, was that there was always a tantalizing amount of truth in his lies.

Over the years, the Liar has told me bits and pieces of a story. When he was a child, he lived in an old house out in the country. Way in the back, nestled along the wooded tree line, there was a shed. In the shed lived a little boy who would often play with my friend the Liar. When he got a little older, the Liar moved away, leaving the shed and the old house behind.

The boy from the shed followed the Liar, making his new home in the Liar’s closet. Though he’s moved many times and is now a grown man, the Liar still makes sure to keep his closet door firmly closed at night. Only now, the little boy in the closet is no longer a little boy. He too is a grown man.

I often wonder how much of this story was true, and what it meant to him. There is symbolism in it for sure, though I don’t know how deeply to read into it. I don't know if he has been trying to tell me something, or if it was just a tale he told me to pass the time. I’ve always wanted to ask, but considering the number of times I've caught him in lies and half truths, I don’t know if I could trust his answer any more than I trust the story itself.

#

There is a rental house situated on the lot at the back of my parent's property. Many years ago my friend the Liar came to visit. We went for a walk out to the pasture and passed the little house. He told me he had seen a face in the screen door, pressed up against the mesh fabric. It had been a woman’s face, angry and terrifying, her hands clawing as if fighting to breach the threshold.

He wove a convincing tale, his description was so vivid. When your best friend is a liar, though, you learn to suspect every word. My family had built the house, and nothing strange had ever happened there. There was no reason to put stock in his story. Haunted houses needed history, a death, something--or so I thought.

While in college I moved out to the rental house, my first taste of freedom and adulthood. I was often home alone, working late on projects. There were always strange sounds in the house coming from the crawlspace and the roof. The noises didn’t bother me, I always convinced myself of some explanation or another. That is until the couch I was sitting on while studying one night was kicked--kicked hard enough that my cat leapt from it and ran into the next room. Though I convinced myself I’d had too much coffee, that I’d imagined it--part of me worried at every sound and shadow.

Time moves quickly, and I moved on, much like my friend the Liar, leaving the rental house behind. My great grandmother lived there for many years after, growing bitter and senile. It was strange to see the matriarch of our family turn mean and angry, a woman who’d always been so full of joy and life. She finally passed away, a husk of the woman she’d once been, leaving the house once again vacant.

Pregnant and happy for the opportunity to be so close to family, I moved back without hesitation. My husband and I lived there for a little more than a year. The scampering, scratching and scraping noises along the roof at night, the rustling under the house and porch--we assumed were the activities of the herd of cats left by my grandmother. There were times, that I’d go outside to try and figure out just how a cat was making that sort of noise on the roof. It never seemed to make sense, the noises came from places that no cat should have been able to reach.

Adding to my sense of unease were the times that I could have sworn I’d seen someone in the hallway. Shadows often seemed to flicker then fall out of place. I began to have unusual, vivid, and occasionally bad dreams. Symptoms of lack of sleep and new motherhood, I'd convinced myself. Then there was the increasing tension between my husband and I. He seemed to hate the house and living there for no real reason. When we left, our marriage was in shambles.

It took nearly two years to patch things up, and we’ve lived happily since then. Though our troubled relationship could be explained away, I couldn’t help but think of that angry face in the screen, the kick to the couch, and my grandmother growing bitter and crazy.

The house has had many tenants over the years. From time to time I’ve asked if the animals seemed to make an unusual amount of noise--if they’ve noticed anything odd while living there. No one else has noticed anything out of the ordinary, or at least haven't mentioned it.

So now I wonder, was the house haunted by some angry spirit, or just a story told to pass the time? Is my friend actually a liar, or does he have a gift to tell the stories of things unseen? The skeptic in me will continue to wonder, while the dreamer half-believes.


- - -
Marie Chavez lives in Seattle with her husband, son, her furry daughter(a mutt of a little dog), three cats and six chickens. When she's not tending to any of the previously mentioned beings in her life, she tries to find time to write.

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Author: Marie Chavez

Contributor: Erik Storey

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Mike stumbled down the dim corridor. He couldn't remember where he had been. He knew he was headed somewhere, but couldn't recall where. The distant lights above him were dim, making it hard to see his shuffling feet as he watched himself put one in front of the other. He abruptly fell when his forehead smacked into something solid. Somehow he managed to get to his feet and stared in awe at the shimmering portal before him. It glittered and waved, weaved and shined. It seemed to transform every time he looked at it from a different angle. There was a white aura surrounding it, and around that was nothing but darkness. While standing on his left foot, it seemed to be round, and started to split into two, but when he shifted his weight to his right, it became a rectangle and, amazingly, solid. But if he leaned back and closed the other eye, it changed again into a glowing yellow sliver that was wide, then smaller, and then suddenly disappeared. When both eyes were open it came back. Now it was brown, a rectangle, and had something glowing in the center, near the side. Mike tentatively stepped up and touched the glowing thing. The portal moved away from him slightly and that yellow sliver of light came back. He wanted that light. It summoned up some deep need in him, something just remembered. Stepping away, Mike thought that somewhere, at sometime he had seen something like this, but it seemed so fantastic that it must have been in a dream. Suddenly the portal vanished and two human shaped, ghostly phantoms crept past him. He shuddered in terror and disbelief, as the portal rematerialized. Mike decided to steel himself and enter through this gateway to nightmares. He ached for the light. He took three deep breaths, sighed, rocked back and forth, then pushed on the portal with both arms. It moved quickly, and Mike flew through, stumbling up to the wooden bar. The last thing he heard before the darkness took him was the bartender asking him, “What'll ya have buddy?”


- - -
Erik spends most of his time outside. If he has to be cooped up, he spends it reading and writing. He lives in Colorado with his wife, daughter and three dogs in a very small house.

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Author: Erik Storey

Contributor: Jesse Campen

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As a retired man, the thought of stealing someone’s car never even occurred to me. That is, until the doctors said that I only had six months to live. Since then, I’ve taken walks every day just to take the suburban neighborhood in. Five and a half month’s later, I was there, in the suited man’s sixties hot-rod.

Nearly every day I took a walk, I saw it parked just a few blocks between my place and Shining Grove Hospital. The suited man always had a dark, strictly business style about him. To be honest, I was always looking at his car more than him. It was sleek, black, and souped up. It roared louder than a panther, and went from zero to sixty in less time than it’d take you to say “black mamba.” I’m not exaggerating when I say I was actually scared of it at first, but when I had three months, I realized something about the car.

One time, when I took a glance into it, I saw that all the doors were unlocked. Not only that, but the man left the keys in the ignition every time. I never knew why he would do that, but it bugged me.

Could I take it for a short drive around the block without him noticing? I began thinking with every passing day.

My conscience always told me that I couldn’t. Even before I was diagnosed with cancer, my license was revoked.

The thoughts became even stronger.

Do it! I’d tell myself.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

The doctor gave you two weeks to live. What have you got to lose, anyways?

Then one day, after the dark suited man had went into his house, I ran back a block to his car. Quickly, I grabbed the ice-cold silver handle to the car and pushed the button to release the door. I threw the door open, and sat myself in the car. After I shut the door, a shiver ran up my spine from the chilling air that filled the car.

A feeling of worriedness filled my mind just being in there, but soon I grabbed my wits, and turned the keys to the ignition. Just as before, it revved louder than a thousand wolves howling at the moon. If the suited man didn’t know someone was going to steal his car before that day, he knew now.

Rolling the window down to let the warm afternoon breeze in, I shot five blocks ahead before both of my hands were on the wheel. I can say that it was the first time a natural smile came to my face in half a year. I was laughing out loud. Cackling like a hyena on rollerblades as I flew by Shining Grove Hospital, the place I was born.

I placed my right hand down to the stick and shifted gears. I felt so glad that I had made the right choice, even if I was scared at first. Coming up was Shining Grove Elementary, my stomping grounds. All of the children stared at me as they shuffled out of the school.

“Have a good day, kids!” I shouted as I waved out the window.

Most of the kids stopped to wave, with big smiles on their faces. I couldn’t help but feel that some of them looked familiar.

I rushed past more places: My high school, my college, the church my wife and I were married in. Eventually, I raced past my old veterinary practice on the edge of the city, Shining Grove Animal Care.

My assistant who died a year before I retired is standing there. She smiles wide and waves. All of the animals that passed away that I knew are there too. It filled me with joy to finally see all of them again.

Now, the sun is at the edge of the horizon as I drive through rolling farmland. Dogs, cats, and animals of all kinds ran at my side and played in the fields, filling the air with their voices. Even though the sun was going down, the light seemed to have become brighter and brighter with time. Joyful, nostalgic tears came to my eyes as the light immersed me and the car drove me slowly into the roads of the afterlife.


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Jesse James Campen is a working student from Maryland, and likes to write specifically to entertain. He is currently attending Full Sail University to get his Creative Writing For Entertainment BFA. Jesse likes story telling in all forms, including stories from video games and themed music albums.

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Author: Jesse Campen

Contributor: Victoria Elizabeth Ann

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Palliative care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their song. His promise. Her life.

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

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


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

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Author: Victoria Elizabeth Ann

Contributor: Pranas Perkunas

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

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

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

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

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

“Who was your last guy?”

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your OTHER place?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Author: Pranas Perkunas

Contributor: Sean Crose

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


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

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Author: Sean Crose

Contributor: Jeff Suwak

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


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

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Author: Jeff Suwak

Contributor: John Laneri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your house already is the finest in Texas.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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Author: John Laneri