Contributor: Jerry Guarino

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    Tony poured 32 ounces of hot water over loose Earl Grey tea into his clear glass teapot.  He toasted a fresh slice of homemade brown bread and spread raspberry jam on top, then took both to his writing desk where his computer was playing new age music.  Summer vacation was his favorite time of the year, away from the classroom, with time to catch up on diversions and fantasies.

    The sky was cloudy and the cool air glided through his window, the weather he liked best.  Tony closed his eyes to capture the full sense of the cool air.  

    The doorbell interrupted his peaceful state.  Who could that be?  Tony opened the door and was greeted by a beautiful young woman, maybe 24.  “Excuse me sir.  We’re collecting money for people in need.  Would you like to make a donation?”

    Tony wrinkled his face.  People in need.  Everyone is in need.  “I’m sorry.  Can you be more specific about your cause?”

    The woman held out an identification badge.  It indeed said her name was Becca Toscana, representing People in Need International.  The name suited this lovely woman with Italian looks, dark hair and dark blue eyes.  “I’m sorry Becca, but I’ve never heard of your charity.  What do they do?”

    “We provide food to hungry children by supporting other charities set up to do that.  You know, Save the Children, Christian Children’s Fund, Unicef and others.”

    Tony was still suspect, but Becca’s smile kept him interested.  “Would you mind if I looked up your group on the computer?”

    “Certainly sir.  What was your name?”

    “Tony Mariani, Becca.  Do you think you could come back a little later?”

    “Not at all Mr. Mariani.  I’ll be around again this afternoon.”

    “Fine, thank you.”  Becca went out to the next house while Tony looked up the charity in question.  

    Well, I’ll be damned.  This charity does exist.  Tony decided to contact the receiving charities to verify that People in Need sent money to them.  Within an hour, he received three emails from legitimate charities supporting their good work.  He was about to write a check when he heard the doorbell again.

   

It was Becca.  “Hello Mr. Mariani.”

    “Becca, come in.  I was just about to write you a check.  Please sit down.”

    Tony used the piano top to write out a check.  “You know, you should get a better name.  People in Need sounds like a scam.”

    “I know.  We hear that a lot.”

    Tony turned and gave Becca the check.  

“One hundred dollars!  Thank you so much.”  Then Becca put her arms around Tony and kissed him slowly.   Tony held her close and before long, they were in bed for an afternoon of lovemaking.  When she left, Becca smiled and waved.  “Bye Amante.”

Tony dreamed about Becca all that night.  I wish I had gotten her number.  The next day, he brought his tea and brown bread to his computer again, hoping to have channeled into some worm hole of fortune.  He was about to write down the experience in his journal when he heard the doorbell.  He looked up, and then rushed to the door, hoping that Becca had come back.

“Hi.  My name is Annika Setterlund.  I’m collecting money to feed hungry children.”

Sure enough, Annika had a badge with her name and representing People in Need.  Tony wondered whether he should mention that he already donated.  

“Please come in Annika.  Let me get my checkbook.  Have a seat.”

“Would one hundred dollars be all right?”  Tony smiled at the Swedish girl with blond hair and blue eyes.

Annika took the check.  “Thank you so much Mr. Mariani.  I can’t tell you how many children will be fed by this generous donation.”  Annika put down her backpack and sure enough, put her arms around Tony.  They made love all afternoon.  She smiled as she left.  “Bye älskare.”

Tony had a quick supper and got to bed early.  An old man like him needed his sleep for energy.  His dreams were as vivid as the events of the day had been.

The next morning he repeated the routine of tea, brown bread and sitting at his computer.  He had forgotten what he was going to do there days ago, but anticipated another doorbell.  Guess it was just some quirk of the universe.  But the memory will last forever.

The doorbell rang.  Tony pinched himself, ran with his checkbook in his pocket and opened the door.

“Hi.  My name is Carolina Munoz.  We’re raising money to feed hungry children.  Would you be interested in donating?”

“I see you’re from People in Need.  Is that a real charity?”  Tony waited patiently as the beautiful Latina explained about her cause.  He decided to continue pretending not to know anything about the best charity he had every contributed to.

Tony smiled and handed the check to Carolina.  “Here you go Carolina.”

“Mr. Mariani.  One hundred dollars.  This is most generous.”  Carolina unbuttoned her blouse, put her arms around Tony.  They made love all afternoon.  Just like the others, she left slowly, smiling and with the same goodbye.  “Adios amante.”

Tony sat back down at his computer.  The cool breeze coming through the window was interrupted by a crack of thunder and suddenly his wife was tapping him on the shoulder.  “Honey.  Are you all right?  I called but you didn’t answer.”

Tony sat up at his desk, noticed his phone was on silent.  “Sorry dear.  Guess I nodded off.  Why are you home so early?”

“I wanted to tell you that tea you bought was confiscated from the store.  Apparently it contained some sort of hallucinogen.  You didn’t drink any, did you?”

Tony pushed the bag of tea into his backpack.  “No dear, I’ve been writing up some lesson plans for next year.  Thanks for thinking of me.”

Tony had flowers delivered to his wife at the office that next day.  She came home early and reciprocated his romantic gesture.  Afterwards, she brought two cups of tea to the bedroom.  “Tony, where did all the brown bread go?”

- - -
Jerry Guarino’s short stories have been published by dozens of magazines in the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. His latest book, "50 Italian Pastries", is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook. Please visit his website at http://cafestories.net

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Author: Jerry Guarino

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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I met a proper woman in a proper pub on a Monday in Peoria. It was noon, time for lunch, and we were sitting stool to stool over very large burgers at a long mahogany bar. It curved in and out as if wind-swept and featured high stools with padded seats and backrests, all in a rich faux maroon that complemented the authentic mahogany. The waiter had put us at the bar together, on the last two empty stools, thinking we had arrived there as a couple. Apologizing with his head bowed, he said no tables were available.

The place was awash in men who had obviously spent a lot of time in the sun. They were talking agri-business very loud. Plaid shirts and John Deere caps were everywhere. Apparently, the price of pork that day had hit new highs and that event seemed to delight the majority of diners. It was obvious these men knew their pork and probably their corn as well. The odd thing was, not one of them seemed to notice the lady sitting next to me. The price of pork notwithstanding, she deserved a second glance if not a whole lot more. She was certainly no farmer's daughter. Probably never baked an apple pie.

It was easy to see why the waiter thought we were a couple. I was in a Brooks Brothers suit, button-down shirt and a serious rep tie, and the lady was attired in the feminine business equivalent, a conservative suit, albeit in tasteful lavender, and a string of pearls. An hour earlier, we had both landed in Peoria on different planes and found our separate ways to the same restaurant. I was taken by how much she looked like Jackie Kennedy after Dallas but without the pillbox hat.

Eventually she spoke. It turned out she was from New York and I was from Chicago and that we were in Peoria for final interviews for jobs we thought we'd get. But living in Peoria, we thought, might not be a fit. We didn't doubt that Peoria was a nice city, a good place to raise a family even though neither of us was married. But we agreed that adjusting to Peoria might be difficult for urbanites like us, especially at the start, since we wouldn't be taken with the price of pork, whether it went up or down.

The lady was a surgeon recruited by a hospital. It took a little prompting but finally she said: "I repair pelvic floors in women."

Not too worry, I thought. She is still a very nice looking woman.

She paused to see if I'd react to her announcement of her vocation and when I didn't, she continued.

"If a bladder drops, or a rectum tumbles or if a womb is full of fibroids, I'm the surgeon that lady needs to see. These are ailments most men wouldn't understand unless they've had a wife who's had them."

I told her I did not have a wife, nor any candidates lined up in Chicago waiting for my hand.

She took a dainty bite of her burger that was still too big, despite being cut in quarters. She sipped her Coke and then informed me, "When I get done, the lady's free of all protrusions. She can urinate, defecate and have sex again, all without discomfort."

I had met my share of women but I had never met a woman, drunk or sober, who had ever said anything as startling as that even when in the throes of breaking up. I had no idea what to say and so I sat and listened as she continued with my education.

"Actually, my patients have a choice," she said. "They can let me do the surgery or they can buy a pessary, a device few women know anything about until I pull a sample from the cabinet and explain its ins and outs. The pessary makes surgery seem simple. All we have to do then is pick a day for me to tuck the lady’s organs back where they belong."

I said a procedure like that sounded painful, even allowing for an anesthetic. It sounded much worse, I said, than a colonoscopy, a procedure I’d become acquainted with early in life due to family history.

She nodded slightly and continued, "Now, if the lady's womb is full of fibroids, I'll suggest we take the uterus out as well. I’ll tell her we'll remove the crib and leave her playpen intact. Often that's the best solution."

She sipped her Coke again and said, "Somewhere in Peoria, as we speak, a bladder's dropping, a rectum's quivering and a fibroid's growing. Believe me, if the salary is right, I'll take this job because a fibroid in Peoria is no different than a fibroid in New York."

Then she looked me in the eye and said, "Well, that's my story. Now tell me, what do you do for a living?"

I finally had the floor and so I took a breath and said: "I repair sentences in documents written by intelligent people expert in arcane fields. Some of them can't spell or punctuate. Or if they can, they dangle participles, split infinitives or run their sentences together like mountain rams in rutting season."

I knew I could not trump her pessary, but I added, "I put muscle in their verbs, amputate their adjectives, assassinate their adverbs. I give my clients final copy they can claim is theirs. The reader never knows that a ferret like me has crept between their lines, nibbling at this and chomping on that."

At the end, I added a remark I hoped might prompt a get-together later, perhaps for dinner and drinks, another chat, a little laughter, and who knows what else. If our spirits meshed, a coupling was something we could accomplish before we'd have to take different planes back home.

"I believe our professions are similar," I told her, sipping the last of my Coke. "I too put things back where they belong and I cut away anything protruding."

About an hour later, we had paid our tabs, said long good-byes, shaken hands with considerable warmth and headed off in different directions for our interviews.

By day's end, we'd both be flying home to different cities. And although we'd still be strangers, we'd be strangers who had had an interesting conversation.

Not interesting enough, however, for either of us to ask the other for a name or number.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Chris Sharp

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“But you’ll have to leave in three days. Here, I have a legal notice for you. Three days or quit, it says. That’s all there is to mention. If you come up with the rent in the three days, you get another month. Then I want you out of my house in any case.”

His landlady left him before he could answer. She had taped the “three days or quit” notice on the wall, above his chair where his cat sat. It didn’t look that much like a legal notice. It looked more like something she bought at Office Depot. But his cat had total faith in him and paid no attention to the flimsy paper note hanging over her.

He stepped out of the house and took his 23-year-old good health with him. For a moment he wished for a car so he could escape somewhere. But he had sold the car three months ago to release some money for rent. He had wished also he hadn’t had a fight over a year ago with his mother, that they had at least spoken some sentences together – even just a “hi mom, lo son.”

Finally he wanted some other kind of family member around – like a father or someone. Outside his window was a man with a belt wrapped around him and the crown of a neighborhood ponderosa pine. The guy probably made a decent income. But this man was no father. He was no brother.

He thought for a few minutes about what options he had left, with no money and no place to move. His mother wouldn’t take him in, based on how she talked. There were no other car dealerships for him to work. The one dealership to hire him promised that a person with no talent, no training and no aptitude for any skill had a real chance to sell cars. But then they released him before he had a chance to sell even one.

Regardless of how hopeless everything looked, his cat continued to have confidence in him. She rubbed against him as he sat on his bed, thinking about everything. “Do you realize,” he said, “if I go homeless, so will you?”

Since he always at least had a roof over his head, he stepped out into the town to prospect for the new homeless culture. It would just take a day. One day you would just stop and sit down in the back of some store. That was how you started being called a bum by everyone until you atrophied into the elements. It would be a little like being removed from your comfortable bed and moving that night into the Dachau concentration camp.

He saw two other homeless men sitting in the back wall of a bank. At one time they were probably lively, maybe even happy kids in school. Now they looked like they were outdoors collecting all the soot in the neighborhood.

It was all too easy to lose heart in this kind of prospecting. After a few minutes he turned into the Surf City public library, where he had been spending several hours of each blank day.

To get through the day, he had been watching the earliest movies ever made on the library computers. The movies reminded him of a supernatural experience as everyone in these flickering, gray and white films had died so many decades ago. These were computers where ghosts lingered.

At first when he came to the Thomas Edison movie “What Happened on West Twenty-Third Street, New York City (1901),” he thought it was so pedestrian that he almost turned it off for something sounding more exciting. A few people in the film from the Gibson Girl era walked on a scarce West 23rd street ---- on a sidewalk that looked overly optimistic in its width – while some horse driven carriages dominated what looked like a clay street.

An air vent on the sidewalk near the camera was carefully avoided by all the pedestrians. But a young man in a straw hat and a young woman in a floor- length Gibson Girl gown came walking right at the air vent from far back in the street.

The air picked up the gown so it sprayed above the girl’s knees. She wore black stockings that caught the curved muscles moving out from her ankles and then segueing in toward her knees. Her legs erupted from among all the 1901 fabric like gold breaking out from dust around Sutter’s Mill.

The second time he saw the movie, he noticed something new. The young woman was laughing after she had wrapped her gown into control and stepped forward off the vent. The young man was laughing, too.

Walking up his stairs, he realized how comforting it was to walk into his own home. Just having a home, and something to eat, made the day good.

The next day at the library, in front of the same computer, he had a more personal experience in 1901 on New York City’s West 23rd Street. He found himself greeting under his breath some of the people walking the streets. When the Gibson Girl came back, he gave his greeting all of his breath.

His room had been abandoned by him and his cat when the landlady checked on him. His clothes had been left there. In a couple of weeks, the landlady threw the clothes into bags and put up a sign.

After six months, his mother concluded he had abandoned her, too.

But more than two years later, the logo of “What Happened on West Twenty-Third Street, New York City (1901)” had been left on a computer at the public library. Two high school girls waiting for computers thought they might as well play the movie while they waited. They laughed as they watched. They especially enjoyed the laughing man to the right of the Gibson Girl for walking alongside his two giggling friends with the cat in his arms.


- - -
I wrote this story after I voluntarily went shelter-less on the streets in Los Angeles County to understand a little how LA’s 50,000 homeless population got there. I have other stories in Linguistic Erosion, Yesteryear Fiction and Weirdyear.

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Author: Chris Sharp

Contributor: LA Sykes

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'We've been so good together ain't we? Tonight, as we've been lying here I just know we've made the right choice my darling. Looking back, I swear to the Lord I believe we were made for each other, you know? Made, just to be as one. After all we've shared it could never have been down to pure chance, it just wouldn't make sense. What a ride we've had my love.'
'Hold me tighter beautiful. That's better. I know what you're saying sweet pea, the way I see it, you'll always be a hell of a wild ride.'
'I'm serious mister, stop fooling around in such a serious conversation.'
'Okay, sorry my love. I know what you're saying, I think the same. Too perfect to be pure co-incidence. You know, I still see the first time we met in my dreams. When I ain't drank, sober sleep you know? What a place the old Miner's Arms was, especially that night. Clear as day I see it, at the bar when that prick started poking me in the back about that damn stool. If he'd had lived I'd have had him at our wedding, to thank him like. Guest of honour, speeding up our meeting. I just know we'd have met anyway, crossed paths at some point, gotten together. But the way I see it, it would have been just wasting time, delaying the inevitable. Then he started screaming in my ear, remember? I glanced around trying to clock potential witnesses I might have to worry about and saw you with your friends. You were the only one looking at us hollering who wasn't cowering, watching closely, your beautiful brown eyes almost got me killed. I froze, a second later and I'd have missed his throat completely. Jabbed him in the shoulder or something, lost the knife and been done myself. But it was written that way, love at first sight. You were the only person in that place who didn't look at me like an animal, even when I was covered in blood. You took me home, Jesus, I remember your girlfriends screaming at you as we left, calling me a monster, but you just kept walking with your dainty hand squeezing mine. Then I told you I’d love you till the day I died in that pokey kitchen when you were licking me clean. I love to dream that dream.'
'The beginning of the ride, my love, when we found each other. I always dream about our first. How nervous were we? Oh my, when she slipped her ties and almost escaped? Stop laughing’
‘Ain’t making fun, you know that baby. Just remember your face, looked like it had been struck by lightning as you slashed her across the heels when she was running. So smart. I almost forgot about that. There’s been so many now they all kind of blend in, we’ve definitely had a hell of a run. You’re right, what a hell of a ride. I’m glad you trusted me when I told you I was going to love you till the day I died. I told you I’d love you forever. I want go now, I’m ready my sweet pea.’
‘Any regrets my darling?’
‘Only two. That we didn’t meet sooner and that they are closing in. Let’s go now my baby, let me lead the way so I can wait for you in forever.’
‘Alright, just relax, good, just a nick, done my darling. Oh how I love that neck, bleed for me, that’s it. Keep going my love. That’s it, shhh, it’s alright, go to sleep, go to sleep my love. I hope you can still hear me, I’m looking in the mirror, gleaming in your sanguine my love, our hunger, our hunger. That’s it, drift away and wait for me my darling. Oh if you could see me now my love, glistening for you. Hold out your hands and wait for me, I’ll follow just as soon as you’ve arrived. That’s it, lay still my love, I will be there in a few moments. I just know we were made to be together. In forever.’


- - -
LA Sykes grew up in small town Greater Manchester, England. He studied psychology and criminology at University of Central Lancashire before working in psychiatry. His flash fiction is up at and due to appear in the likes of Shotgun Honey, Powder burn Flash and Blink Ink amongst others. He can be contacted at sykesfiction@live.co.uk

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Author: LA Sykes

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Zenobia Jackson told Officer Murphy that her husband, Rufus, was "a wonderful man when he was awake" but for years he had been jerking "something terrible" during his sleep and had kept waking her up. He'd swing his arms, she said, like those martial arts men he liked to watch on television. When the bouts were over, he'd give her a big kiss on the forehead and go to bed.

"Oh, he was just a doll," she said, "when he was awake."

In the last month, however, Rufus had fallen out of bed three times "fighting" in his dreams. In the morning he'd tell her he'd been dreaming that he was back in Vietnam. Sometimes he dreamt he was shooting at burglars breaking into their house in the old neighborhood. That's why they had to move to a different neighborhood and why he bought a gun, a little pistol he kept under his pillow just in case he heard someone in the house. You can't be too careful these days, he told her. He even taught her how to shoot the gun one night when no one else was on the tennis courts in Sherman Park. He said she was real good. Not many women, he said, can aim straight. They could have used her, he said, in Vietnam.

But last night, she said, when Rufus was dreaming again, he swung his arms at least ten times, like he was chopping sugar cane back in Louisiana before they moved North. He caught her with an elbow to the eye and then another to the nose just as she was ducking. “That's why I look the way I do,” she told Officer Murphy.

Long ago, she had stopped trying to wake Rufus when he was thrashing about. It was because of the pistol under his pillow. He had reached for it one night right after she had shaken him. She had screamed and that woke him up and he wasn't too happy about it. He said he couldn't get back to sleep the rest of the night. And he wasn't lying because she was awake all night, too, listening to him grumble and curse.

Just a week ago, she had taken him to a sleep clinic where he had stayed overnight. The doctor said he might be suffering from sleep apnea but she had never heard of anyone with sleep apnea thrashing and kicking about like her Rufus. She had a lady friend in the choir at church whose husband had sleep apnea but all he did was "snore too loud," her friend said, no thrashing about.

"So that's how it happened," Zenobia told Officer Murphy, who was busy taking notes. Rufus had reached under the pillow for the pistol and she had to stop him.

"Two in the head," she said, "and he be dead."


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Tony Conaway

- -
Water. Food. Shelter. Sex.
They say these represent our most instinctual drives. However, for some of us, there is another, stronger drive: the need to prove that we know.
I am a scientist, but it’s more than that. It’s not enough for me to know all sorts of obscure and irrelevant facts. I have to let you know that I know.
This intense need to prove that you know something is stronger than the need for food, stronger than the survival instinct, even stronger than the sex drive.
Let me give an example. Recently, I took a young lovely to a production of La bohème. She loved it. She wept during “Musetta’s Waltz.” (And I managed to avoid telling her that Bobby Worth adapted “Musetta’s Waltz” into a pop song called “Don’t You Know?” which became a hit for Della Reese in 1959. I was planning to save that for later.)
However, in Act 2, the background characters onstage included a peddler selling helium balloons. I took one look at the balloons and muttered “Ramsay!”
“What?” she hissed.
“Those helium balloons. La bohème is set in the 1830s. But helium was discovered by Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist, in the 1890s. There’s no way anyone could have helium balloons in the 1830s.”
I got out my smartphone-notepad and started scribbling notes to myself.
“Of course, helium was observed in the sun decades earlier. It’s the second-most abundant element in the universe. But Ramsay was the first to isolate it on the Earth, by breaking down a mineral containing uranium called –“
“What? What’s WRONG with you?’ she hissed.
Someone in back of us shushed us, which effectively postponed our fight until the intermission between Acts Two and Three.
She broke up with me by phone the next day. And she sent me a book on Zen, suggesting that I learn to be “in the moment.”
As if anything could be more “in the moment” than the blissful firing of neurons that yields some obscure factoid!
I can’t explain why such trivia sticks in my head, when other facts slip though without disturbing a single neuron. I’m more likely to remember the chemical symbol for Yttrium than, say, a girlfriend’s birthday, or eye color, or the six-month anniversary of our first date. Actually, the latter rarely comes up, since we don’t usually last six months.
This pattern continued with my next girlfriend. One night, we went to an old movie house that showed, appropriately enough, old movies. The feature was a well-reviewed 1958 Western called “The Big Country.” Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons. Burl Ives won an Oscar as the villain.
This particular girlfriend was of an amorous bent. This old theatre had a few double seats, like loveseats. She picked one of them for us. Ten minutes into the feature we were entwined in each other’s arms.
Despite our activities, I made occasional glances at the screen. In one scene, a party is underway, and I noticed something odd.
“Bustles.” I muttered. Actually, it came out like “us-uls,’ since her lips were on mine at the time.
I pulled away so I could speak. “Look at the women in this party! In every Western I’ve ever seen, when women dress up, they wear bustles. But none of these women are wearing them. Why?”
“Bustles. You into big butts or something?”
“No. I’m just confused. Why are these women dressed so…MADAME X!”
“What the –“ I stood up, accidentally dumping her onto the floor. She let loose with a creative litany of curses.
The wealthy daughter of the ranch owner had just made her entrance in a remarkable dress.
“That dress is patterned after an iconic painting by John Singer Sargent. It was called ‘Madame X,” but it was actually a portrait of a French socialite called Madame Pierre Gautreau. It was painted in Paris in the 1880s, so I suppose the style could have made its way to the West –“
But she was already standing and rearranging her clothes. She cursed me and said she was leaving. After I rearranged my own clothes, I followed her out of the theater – I had driven us there, after all – but I got outside just as she was getting into a cab.
I stood the sidewalk for a moment. I had lost interest in the movie. Looking at my watch, I noticed that it was almost a full hour until closing at the local science museum. I got in my car and drove there.
And in the museum, I stood at one of my favorite places in the world: in front of a giant, wall-sized version of the periodic table of elements! One by one, each glorious element was illuminated, until the entire grid was lit. Then the lights went out and the process began again.
I was still there at closing time, when a guard ushered me out.


- - -
Tony Conaway has written hundreds of nonfiction articles for magazines, trade publications and newspapers. He has cowritten books published by Macmillan, McGraw-Hill and Prentice Hall. His fiction has appeared in two anthologies and the publications Clever; Killers, Thrillers and Chillers; qarrtsaluni; and The Rusty Nail.

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Author: Tony Conaway

Contributor: Jerry Guarino

- -

    On a recent road trip to Canada, I discovered a most unusual business in Oregon.  Fireworks.  I’m not talking about the stands they have in other states, where you can pick up some sparklers, firecrackers and bottle rockets.  No, in Oregon they have thrown out the public safety ordinances cities usually impose on explosives.  In fact, they seem to embrace it.  Huge tents, the size of a Ringling Brother’s circus, house millions of implements of destruction from the iconic firecracker to something comparable to C4, napalm and nuclear missiles.

    But the most intriguing aspect of this free-for-all business was that for the most part, these huge tents are manned (uh, womaned?) by teenage girls; school clubs, sports teams, cheerleaders; all the kids who used to hold car washes and bake sales were now selling the second most desired commodity known to modern man, not to mention teenage boys.  Apparently, the profit margin is higher on weapons of mass destruction than the cost of soap, water and baking ingredients would allow.

    Kelly, the captain of the local high school tennis team, and her teammates were one of twelve such groups inside the 3000 square feet of tent space, just outside Portland on the Saturday before the Fourth of July.  The were dressed in their tennis uniforms, ivory white with red trim and matching socks and sneakers, oddly reminiscent of the USC song girls.  Other groups of girls there included the yearbook staff, the school band, the field hockey team, the book club, the volleyball and basketball teams, the French club and the school library volunteers, all raising money for some trip the following year.

    Kelly was dating David, the captain of the boy’s tennis team.  David used to visit the tent, along with every other male in a ten-mile radius, not to buy, but to chat with his beloved girlfriend of three years.

    “Hi Kelly” he said.

    “Hi sweetheart.  I was hoping you would stop by.  Keep some of these creepy old men from hanging around our booth.”

    “Well, you have the most beautiful girls here, except for maybe the French club.”

    Kelly punched him lightly in the arm.  “French club, huh?”

    “Just kidding” David said as he smiled.  “You know I only have eyes for you” as he glanced over to the French club girl holding the four foot rocket with a skull and crossbones and large red print warnings and disclaimers about lost appendages and eyesight.

    “You better, or you can find another girl at Cal next year; I’ll take that Stanford spot.”

    “Heck, no.  We’d be rivals and have to sneak around.  I can’t wait to get to Berkeley with you.  By the way, did you hear from the Cal coach about making the team?”

    “She sent me a letter inviting me to try out this summer.  Everyone who makes the team gets a scholarship.  But she hinted that she couldn’t imagine my not making it.”

    “Great.  Wish I were as lucky.  Apparently California has a lot of great boy tennis players from Socal locking up the scholarships, but I did get an invitation to try out for the freshman team.”

    “You’ll make it David.  You won the high school state singles title.  Besides, you have me as a training partner” and she laughed.  Mike acknowledged the jibe.

    “I have to go run some errands for my folks.  Are we still on for burgers and a movie tonight?”

    “Sure, looking forward to it.  Pick me up at my house at seven.”  She leaned over and kissed David on the lips.  David just smiled and winked as he left the tent and passed the ambulance outside handing out safety flyers for using fireworks.

***

    That evening David and Kelly cuddled in their car at the drive-in, almost watching the double feature of scary teenage movies, taking just enough time away from kissing to glance at the movie and eat snacks when they were interrupted by a loud bang at the side of the car.  Outside was the culprit, Mike, linebacker from the football team.  David was first to react.

    “Damn Mike, you scared the shit out of us.”

    “Just messin with you guys.  You’re my favorite non-sports couple.  I saw you on my way back from the snack bar.”

    “Well you can keep on walking,” said Kelly.  “The movie is scary enough.”

    “Aw, hear that David.  She thinks I’m scary.”  Mike made a monstrous face and left.

    “What an asshole” said David.  “Are you OK?”

    “Yeah, I’m OK.  Wonder what college he’s going to?”

    “It won’t be on his academics, that’s for sure.  But his football skills should get him in somewhere.  I heard U. of O.”

   

    “Another obnoxious duck.  He’ll fit right in.”  Kelly noticed that Mike’s car was far ahead of theirs, in the front row next to the big screen, so they shouldn’t be interrupted again.  “Is he still dating Lynn?”

    “I think so.  Thought she had better taste than that.  She’s in the French club, you know.”  David knew this would get him in trouble but couldn’t resist.

    Kelly play pounded him again and they fell into each other’s arms kissing.

    Kelly saw Lynn walk past their car to the bathroom.  “Hey Kelly” Lynn said.

    “Hi Lynn.  You heard from your applications yet?”

    Lynn was smiling.  “Yes, I got into UCLA, my first choice.  You guys are going to Cal, right?”

    David and Kelly both clapped.  “Yes, but I’m glad you’ll be in California too.  We might see you at a game or tennis match.”

“I’d like that guys.  I’m breaking up with Mike tonight.  Thought this was just public enough to keep him from getting crazy.”

“Well if he acts up, come back to us and we’ll give you a ride home.”

“Thanks guys.  See you later.”

***

    Between features, they showed those awful commercials with dancing food at the snack bar; now all the cars were filled with teenagers making out, having no reason to look up.  That is until they heard a loud explosion.  Kelly saw Lynn running back to their car.

    “What happened?” Kelly said to Lynn.

    “When I broke up with Mike, he went nuts.  Pulled out some huge explosive and set it off in front of the car.  Unfortunately, it shot back into his grill and now his whole car is on fire.”

    David opened the door and let Lynn in.  “C’mon.  We’ll take you home.  You don’t need to be around him tonight.”

    “Thanks guys.”  Kelly sat in the back seat comforting Lynn.  David could see them in the rear view mirror, now imagining how it would be with both of these girls together.  Fireworks, he thought and was smiling all the way home.

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Jerry Guarino’s short stories have been published by dozens of magazines in the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. His latest book, "50 Italian Pastries", is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook. Please visit his website at http://cafestories.net

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Author: Jerry Guarino

Contributor: Paul Jenner

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Charles felt his back twinge as he bent down to reach into the freezer. Age was starting to catch up with him. Still he liked to think he was in pretty good shape, considering he would be 75 tomorrow. He rooted around at the back of the freezer. If the police knew what he had in here he would be arrested, so it kept it secret and hidden behind ice cream and frozen peas. Charles lifted a large tub of Häagen-Jerry’s out of the way and carefully pulled out his last steak, a thick slab of sirloin. He turned it over in his hands, examining it, savouring it, imagining how good it would be to eat. Finally, he placed it carefully on a plate to defrost and went up to bed.
Charles couldn’t sleep though. Every police siren or drone helicopter passing overhead panicked him. He’d gone downstairs and covered up the meat from prying eyes but he still couldn’t relax. He was a law abiding man, he paid his taxes but he enjoyed the occasional steak or rack of ribs or fried chicken. Was that so bad? Meat eating had been outlawed 50 long years ago. Most of the population had never tasted animal flesh and the rest had forgotten. But not Charles, he’d tried many times but he just couldn’t seem to give it up. Biting into a succulent burger or picking the skin off a chicken wing were not experiences you could get eating tofu and vegetables. He suspected his birthday steak would be his last piece of meat though. Over the years the supply had dwindled, his last dealer had been arrested over a year ago for ‘Meat trafficking and conspiracy to imprison and murder animals’. He would be spending the rest of his life behind bars. Charles had been unable to find another black market butcher and his once stocked freezer had just one more steak. He had saved it for his 75th birthday.
Charles reasoned he must have fallen asleep eventually as he woke the next day to bright sunshine streaming through his window. “Happy birthday to me,” he sang to himself as he creaked slowly down the stairs. He had planned to have the steak in the evening but the excitement of consuming the delicious flesh coupled with the fear of a police raid was too much for him. Charles decided to cook it now, for breakfast, with fries and creamy peppercorn sauce.
15 minutes later and Charles was sat at the table with his birthday breakfast. He carefully sliced into the steak. He had cooked it to perfection, the outside was seared brown but the middle was a lovely shade of pink. Charles savoured the taste in his mouth; the meat was tender and delicious. He tried to eat it slowly and make the experience last but all too quickly he was down to the last mouthful. Suddenly there was a loud rapping at the door. Charles’ heart leapt and he quickly stuffed the final piece of steak into his mouth, hoping to destroy the evidence. The rapping at the door had become hammering, “This is the police. Open the door at once!” shouted a voice on the other side. Seconds later the door caved in and armed police swarmed into Charles’ home. They handcuffed him, read him his rights and collected evidence from his plate and kitchen.
Charles felt strangely calm as he sat in the back of the police van while they finished collecting evidence from the crime scene. He wondered if he would be the last man on Earth to ever eat the flesh of an animal. He vaguely wondered how the police had caught him. Maybe a neighbour had smelt the cooking or perhaps they had him under surveillance. He closed his eyes and remembered how delicious the juicy sirloin had tasted. It had been a damn good steak he thought as the van drove away.


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I am a 32 year old teacher living and working in Sheffield, England. I have been teaching maths for nearly a decade and I have recently decided to try my hand at writing short fiction.

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Author: Paul Jenner

Contributor: Kristina England

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“We’re what?”

“We’re taking the birds to the beach,” Stacey said, rubbing sunscreen onto her shoulders, then down her arms, her fingers making slow, small loops.

Nick watched her apply the cream. It always confused him how a woman could make even sun protection look sexy. Or maybe it was just the male hormones that distorted the freeze frames in his brain.

He looked over at the nylon carrier, then back at Stacey.

“Why the heck would parakeets want to go to the beach?”

“To listen to the ocean, silly,” she said with a full smile, the strawberry-flavored lip gloss she had applied five minutes ago reflecting back at him.

“Okay, so play some nature music or something. Those birds aren't going to the beach”

She gave him the look that made any man check himself in the bathroom to make sure all his wonders were still there.

Nick looked at the birds. The problem with every relationship was that each person came with a level of quirkiness. Stacey’s crazy streak came with her birds. He’d dated OCD and paranoia. A bird woman didn’t seem as crazy. Or maybe it did.

The birds looked back at him and made no protest in regards to their current situation. They were quiet and content in their nylon carrier. Sure, they squawked at bedtime, but take them to the beach and they were just as happy as bikini-clad women.

He sighed. “Okay... It looks like the convertible roof is staying up today.”

She smiled, leaned over and kissed him. He suddenly felt a desire for Strawberry Shortcake so he kissed her back.

Ten minutes later, he lugged the birds out to the car. Stacey did three checks of their driving situation and they were off.

Betsy and Stan (the birds) were surprisingly quiet on the trip. The cars outside were more noticeable than Stacey’s feathery friends.

At the beach (a small one that only a few locals came to), Stacey set the bird carrier down on the sand. The waves rushed in and out, hissing against the rocks. The birds heads turned and let the water spray their little faces.

Nick laid down and watched them in silence. After five minutes, he turned to Stacey.

“I think those birds have enjoyed the beach more than I have in the last thirty years.”

Stacey smiled at him and lowered her sunglasses. “Nope.”

“Nope?”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Relaxed.”

“Then there you go.”

He turned back to the birds and continued to watch them, the sound of Mother Nature lapping his ears.

Maybe Betsy and Stan weren’t so bad after all, even if they squawked when Nick and Stacey made love.


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Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her writing is published or forthcoming at Decades Review, Extract(s) Gargoyle, The Story Shack, and other magazines.

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Author: Kristina England

Contributor: David Macpherson

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I tell a bartender I hear tips is an acronym for “to insure professional service.”

The bartender, still taking orders, says, “I heard that too and I think that’s bullshit. It can’t be true, and if it is, it shouldn’t be. It’s saying I need your bar change so I’ll do my job in proper like. It’s the latest Insurance racket. You got car insurance, health insurance and now you have mixed drink insurance, with an annuity rider for cocktails and personal injury in case you get hit by a champagne cork. Really. To insure professional service. I got more pride than that. I do professional service because I am a fucking professional. It’s what I do. I’m not an actor filling time between auditions. I ain’t a novelist working on my steampunk manuscript. I tap kegs. Pour stouts, mix drinks and talk up thirsty mouths and tell bad jokes. I’ll do that if I get a tip or not. You stiff me on a tip and next time you come in, I still will smile and serve and do the whole fucking routine, I might not mean it, but you still get the song and the dance and the beer. That acronym is saying that the only way I’ll do what I am supposed to is if you bribe me. It might be offensive if it mattered. Truth is some will tip, some will not and some will order another. Sometimes I am having the best time with a customer, we’re like old friends and they leave me a quarter and a dime. And then there are others on a limited budget, counting out every penny and still tipping me twenty percent. Who can say.”

He stops. Notices a customer leaving without settling a tab. He probably just forgot, we are sure.The bartender mumbles “Watch me insure professional service” as he leaves the bar area and follows the guy out the door to politely remind him of what is expected in these moments of transaction.


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Author: David Macpherson