Contributor: Miles Gough

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Can you believe it, I was a out getting fresh air. I know. I went out and didn’t even light up my smokes. I needed to cleanse my nostrils. I am the kind of guy that only sees the outdoors as a place to run through to get to the liquor store. As far as I can see, the natural environment is a placeholder until we can zone a few more cigar bars and mini-marts. But I have been working in the dangerous world of weaponized gasses and I just had to go out. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The birds need to shut the fuck up, but the outdoors is okay for a change of pace. Wouldn’t want it to do it that often, you know camping is not a four letter word, but its still pretty obscene.

Yeah, I’ve been working in natural gas, but in a valid way. I ain’t helping the environment, I’m causing havoc, or at least trying to. Couple weeks back Nolan, the sommelier at the Cavendish Club, came to me with an idea. You know how he is this crazy movie nerd. He pairs wines to Jean Claude Van Damme movies. He tried to pair reds with Steven Segal movies but it turns out that the only things goes well with those masterpieces is Schlitz in a can.

Nolan came to me and said he had a way to make some money selling weaponry. He showed me this French movie to explain his idea and I’m in hell, because this shit has subtitles and middle aged guys in a big house. The plot is they came to this house to eat themselves to death with fine French bullshit food. Whatever. Why kill yourself on foie gras and truffles when Big Macs and super sized fries are so easy to get? Anyway, I’m being tortured by culture and finally the movie gets to the end and one the guys farts and farts and farts, like for two minutes he’s farting and then he keels over and is dead.

Nolan was like, “That’s it, That’s what we need to do. We need to make a food that will make you fart to death. We can package it as Silent But Deadly Cuisine and sell it to folks who want to do a little nefariousness and get away with it. No matter how nasty the fart is, the evidence will be cleared by a good breeze. The medical examiners will look for poison in the food, but there is no poison, it’s just plain food.” He told me I was the guy to make up a dish that could fart a man to death.

This was stupid, so yeah, I had to do it. I did my research, looked into what could make a guy fart so long their whole system would shut down. I used some special skills with it, the kind I know. I had to create food that was hard to digest and it would be stuck in the colon making bacteria. I pan seared a small cut of prime rib. I made a sauce for it using five different beans and cream. I sweetened it with sorbitol and some other fructose. I placed it all on a bed of au gratin potatoes. I also got my hand on an enzyme that slowed digestion of food so that it this packet will wind up in the colon almost undigested.

This seemed like the ticket, but shit, I wasn’t going to test it. Nolan had a guinea pig in mind. There was this asshole who always ate at the Cavendish who was rude and nasty. So Nolan gave him my dish as a treat for being such a great customer. The asshole acted like of course he deserved this special treat. I tell you. Why we cooks haven’t killed all our customers already in one big hibachi massacre is beyond me.

Nolan served it to this asshole and he sucked it up but fast, and you know, he didn’t die. Did he fart? He farted. Ever been to the elephant house at the zoo? Kind of like that he farted. But he didn’t even complain of cramps or discomfort. And the worst part, he loved the food. Told everyone to order it, that it was a wonderfully earthy dish every gourmand should eat.

I went over to the Cavendish today to check on Nolan. Is he pissed at me. He asked me why I couldn’t fail and make a shitty dish? He’s in hell; the place stinks like you never sniffed. And everyone is ordering my dish as a special. All I can tell you buddy, don’t go to that neighborhood and light a match. Something might explode.

Wait. Maybe something will explode. Okay, so I can’t kill someone by farting, but what if they can flame throw those farts? We can have ourselves a decent weapon that no one can frisk you about. Yeah, that’s the way I’ll go with it. You know me, making lemonade out of lemons. Foul stinky ass lemonade, but still lemonade, brother. Got to go, I got to find an igniter that can fit comfortable in a fella’s underpants.


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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: Julie Lye

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The house had stood empty for years. It had once been a bright yellow house full of laughter and love, always busy with music or cooking smells wafting out of it, anyone was welcome, it was that kind of house, but that was many years ago now. Annie could tell you about the house, she had been a small girl when it was built and even though she was now one hundred and two years old she could recall it as if it were yesterday.
Annie must have been about five or six when the men began to build the yellow house. She could still remember how very excited she’d felt and recalled how she would sit on the steps of her parents porch chin in hands watching with amazement. She’d never seen a castle being built and the workmen were always friendly, she often saw her Grandpa talking to them and very often they’d drop some sweeties off for her.
The house grew very slowly to begin with, there was the floor to put down first but then after the first two or three months day by day the house began to grow. Before going in for her dinner each evening Annie would stare at the house almost willing it to grow. It grew and grew; it had three storeys and a big drive, a huge wooden front door, a very odd squiggly roof and lots and lots of windows.
Annie was at school the day it was painted and still remembers how bright the house looked when walking home that day with her mother. Her father had called it an over ugly giant bird box, but she didn’t agree. It was huge yes but it was also amazing and vibrant, it almost smiled at you and it seemed to shout come and play. It was magic and to little Annie it was nothing less than a fantastic and colourful castle.
Eventually on a Saturday morning as she recalled, the big removal truck arrived with three stocky men in brown uniforms declaring they were ‘removals’. The whole street had either been out in their picket fenced gardens or peeping from behind twitching curtains. Annie had of course taken up her residence on the steps of their small yet clean porch. The usual type of big furniture had been carried in, sofas, beds, dressers and a huge dark dining table.
It was all very exciting and to this day she remembers how her skin had tingled with curiosity and how tiny goosey bumps had appeared on her arms. She had run into tell her mother all about it but had been told to be a good girl and try not to be too nosey. Her mother was like that, she wasn’t interested in what was going on elsewhere, she was only ever interested in her father, her brother and of course herself. Annie loved her mum lots and lots.
As we talked a tear ran down Annie’s face as the memory of being a little girl and of her mother washed over her.
After a big hug and a cookie Annie returned to her post and continued her vigil. It was soon to be rewarded for a large black car pulled up and out from it climbed a giant!
Her hands involuntarily clasped over her mouth in a gasp, as they must have done on that day.
A giant, how can that be, weren’t they only true in fairy tales? They weren’t real were they? So many questions ran through her head, but Annie, being a good girl, stayed sat in her usual position, eyes agog as she watched the giant walk around the car and open the door for the most beautiful lady that she had ever seen. It was like a fairy tale, there was a giant and a beautiful princess, Annie couldn’t believe her luck, they’d come to live here in the big yellow castle! A few moments later three children emerged from the big black car, two boys and a girl. They began running around the car skipping and singing, could they be new friends or were they all ogres and want to eat her?
Annie became scared and ran indoors bumping straight into Grandpa who caught her and spun her round in the air, she loved flying with Grandpa it made her tummy giggle inside.
Annie grew tired and I knew our interview was over for the day. I thanked her for her hospitality and asked if I could come again, I had a feeling there were a lot more stories to listen to from Annie. She said I could come back the same time next week if I’d like to but could I please bring some Jelly Babies.


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I have always loved reading and recently discovered how much I enjoy writing when I joined the local writers group.

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Author: Julie Lye

Contributor: Bruce Costello

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Once upon a time during the Nixon reign, two men stood side by side at a country bus stop. One was young with an ugly scarlet scar and a dreamy look on his face. The other was old and bald, wearing a scruffy ex-army coat and an intriguing hook where most people have a right hand.
The young man with the scar, a history student, while continuing to face straight ahead, was twisting his eyes sideways and downwards, examining the hook as discreetly as he could. It was grey and fierce-looking, reminding him of an illustration from a favourite boyhood book: Captain Hook in a vivid red and blue pirate’s coat, wearing a black cocked hat with white skull and crossbones, holding an evil sword in his left hand while thrusting at Peter Pan with his horrible hook.
The hook’s owner seemed about 70, unkempt, unshaven, and probably unloved, too, thought the student. But, who knows, he could have been a dashing soldier once, wounded in battle. Perhaps a booby-trapped cigarette case left by the retreating Germans in Italy. A sniper’s bullet in Normandy? Shrapnel on Guadalcanal?
Pretending to look down the road for the bus, the student now stares directly at the old chap, and sees a young soldier in war-torn battledress running crouched across a jungle clearing through bursting shells towards a crashed and burning aircraft. The pilot is still alive. The soldier hears his screams through the smashed perspex and sees him, panic-stricken, struggling to free himself from the leaping flames. The soldier reaches the scene, leaps heroically onto the burning wreck and pulls the pilot free, as the shells burst close, closer, ahhh! too close! The soldier falls. Blood spurts onto the jungle floor.
The bus pulled up with a squeal. The student stood back to let the other board first. The old man stopped in the doorway and began to fumble for money in his coat pocket, but the driver waved him on with a grin. He shuffled to the back of the bus as the student bought his ticket.
“Do you know that old guy?” said the student to the bus driver, who seemed a friendly sort.
The driver laughed. “Simple Sam? Everyone round here knows Simple Sam.”
“Simple? But what happened to his hand? Did he lose it in the war?”
The bus driver laughed again. “That’ll be the day. He lost it in the river, mate, when he was a lad. Him and his brother, fishing with dynamite.”
The student thanked the driver, found a seat near the front and settled back with his eyes closed, but the scene from the jungle had faded. He smiled to himself, then opened his eyes and, looking up, saw the man with the hook standing there, staring down at him.
“Pardon me for staring,” said the old man politely. “I seen your scar back at the bus stop and I been wondering. Was you in Vietnam?”
*


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Bruce Costello recently retired and took up writing to keep his brain ticking over. So far it's working, although there are signs of surface rust appearing behind his left ear.

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Author: Bruce Costello

Contributor: Jack Hill

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Heat rash burned in my ass crack. Thirsty for a diet soda and cigarette. I offered to buy a cigarette from three smokers at three street corners. Pity from being shot down sloshed in until I knotted my fists and stomped the eight blocks home. Black holes for eyes watched me step, knee bones popping.
The coffee can in the kitchen lashed back at me, cutting open my thumb knuckle, when I jerked out a ten dollar bill. Aluminum molasses collapsed under my shoe after five or six attempts. The kicked remains clanked against the stove bottom.
Sold out, the cashier said when I asked for Camel Wides.
Camel lights, I asked her.
Sold out, the cashier said.
All the cigarettes are sold out for you, the cashier said.
What, I asked her.
I know you stole a six pack last week, she said.
I shook my head.
Leave my store, she said.
You have me confused with someone else, I said.
Leave my store, she said.
It wasn't me, I said.
I remember your face, she said.
I wouldn't steal from this store, ever, I said.
You will never buy cigarettes here again, she said.
I would never steal here – this store is in my neighborhood, I said.


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Jack Hill works in litter abatement, edits Crossed Out Magazine, and lives in Northern California.

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Author: Jack Hill

Contributor: Phil Lane

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Shea Stadium looms like a bloated, blue behemoth. Such strange hybridity results when two disparate heritages are mixed. How had the marriage of the old, storied Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants yielded this blue-orange monstrosity? I myself am the offspring of a classically trained pianist and a somewhat well-known poet, so I’m living proof that when you mix words and music, you don’t always end up with ballads. But it’s New Year’s Eve and I know I’m supposed to be a new leaf turning in an old tree or something.

“Jimmy!” I can hear the voice even before I pick up the spastic cell phone which beeps, rings, and vibrates simultaneously, an alarm bell warning me of an encroaching domestic shitstorm. So this is love. It’s like a bloodhound with bionic senses. You can’t cover up your tracks or hide your scent or ever be silent enough to throw it. I muster every last quarter-inch of restraint I have not to answer it with an abrasive, monosyllabic “WHAT?” I opt instead for “Hey, Baby.” I’ve always hated this particular term of endearment but, then again, she is a big baby so what the hell?

Snowflakes fall in my hair and I remember when I was six and had head lice and got to stay home from school for a week: halcyon days. Snow collects on the Unisphere, the 150-foot steel globe that towers over the park. A lifetime ago, on our way to a ballgame, my father had explained that it had been meant to symbolize man’s conquest of space when it was been built back in the sixties for the New York World’s Fair. Forty years later, it seems like it’s here just to mess with me—some strange Orwellian construct meant to remind me that I am nothing, an insect, a cog in a machine, irrelevant.

“Babe, where are you?” she squeals into the phone. “The party’s already started, they have
jell-o shots (my favorite), Mindy’s here and I haven’t seen her in forever, they’re talking about playing a drinking game, everyone’s asking about you, I’m a little drunk already, can you tell? You can’t tell, can you? Be honest.”

Just as I’m mercifully hanging up, I notice a woman walking towards me. I watch her advance with prurient interest. She has these long legs that remind me of stilts which seem to transport her across the park. She is pale and with the snow falling around her, she looks like an apparition, a snow ghost. Just once, just once I wish I didn’t have to work for it. How much goddamned good karma does one person have to bank before a gorgeous woman throws herself at him? I swear she’s looking at me but then I’ve always had a vivid imagination, the kind that can cause one’s mother to burst into one’s bedroom at the most inopportune time. I think about my enduring suspicion of women; surely that indelible moment during my most impressionable years has been a contributing factor.

“I’m on my way, baby.” I try to sound oh so nonchalant despite my mounting intrigue concerning the woman heading in my direction. “Just out of the shower and getting ready right now. I’ll see you soon. Tell Joey to keep the beer cold for me.”

“Babe, you should wear your black shirt, you know, the one with the pink pinstripes, it looks so good on you. It’s just everyone here’s dressed up really nice for New Year’s so, you know, I just wanna make sure you’re not, well, underdressed.”

“Ok, sweetie, don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in a bit.” I enthusiastically press the END CALL button. The thing about cell phones is that you can’t slam them down the way you could the old landline phones of my youth. In this case, it was for the best, but sometimes I miss the good old days when you could say everything by the way you hung up the receiver. You could even do a half-slam to show that you were pissed but not quite enraged. That would have been the proper flourish for this call.

Just as I am about to get up and drag myself obligingly to Joey and Jane’s party, I hear a voice beside me on the park bench.

“Hi.” It is stony and unsympathetic, the exact opposite of Lauren’s flighty, valley girl intonation. “I’ve been watching you. What’s your name?”

Finally, the Karma Gods are paying me back, and after decades of building up credit. It’s about damn time.

“Jimmy,” I reply, hearing my voice waver and crack and cursing myself for letting the moment emasculate me.

Nevertheless, it is New Year’s Eve and I know I’m supposed to make a resolution. Shea glares down at me like a Jotun, studying my movements with terrible scrutiny. The Unisphere seems to be spinning wildly on its artificial axis, imploring me to make a wonderfully rash decision. Accordingly, I toss my phone into the snow. It seems to sizzle as it rushes into its rectangular grave. “So what are you up for tonight?” she asks, her craggy voice oozing smoke and slicing through the park’s clean breeze of tyranny.

“What do you mean?,” I ask back, my tenor still an octave too high.

“I mean I’ll suck your cock for fifty bucks.”

From its snowy resting place, the phone begins to ring again. Its muffled tones remind me of my deliberate tapping on the old upright piano as I attempted to play Auld Lang Syne on a New Year’s Eve long ago. My father had stood over me with a ruler, ready to correct my errant fingers if they misplayed a note. Sometimes I intentionally played it wrong, my own little shot at revenge. I was a glutton for punishment, then as now.


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Phil Lane's work has been appearing online and in print for the past decade. He lives in New Jersey and teaches English for a private tutoring company.

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Author: Phil Lane

Contributor: David Macpherson

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A guy at the bar let the girl go. Tells us she was hot, she was tight, she was worth drawing on a fresh piece of good paper. He tells us she was into him, she smiled and fluttered and hummed desire. When they met for designer hot dogs and Fresca, he gave her up though. “Drool was coming out of her mouth,” he says.

We don’t get what he means. “So was she really hungry,” one of us asks.

“No,” he says. She wasn’t that bright. Dumber than a bagful of poorly chosen metaphors. “I need a smart girl. A girl who can talk and not just talk. She got to have thoughts about politics. And a job that does more than pay the rent. “So after the restaurant I said goodbye and that’s it.”

We married guys see this a minor sacrilege. For we are casual sex rubberneckers. We are tourists in the land of promiscuity. We take pictures, buy postcards, mouth off that its not as good as it used to be, too commercialized. We will not concede he may have done the right thing. “How can you let her go,” we ask.

“She wasn’t for me. She and I had nothing to talk about.”

We look at him. We stare at the words sailing past us. We speak different dialects. We almost comprehend was the other is attempting to confess.


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Author: David Macpherson

Contributor: Peter McMillan

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Lately, he hadn't been feeling himself. Overworked, burnt out. Covering for this person then that one. Pulled in all directions. Spread thin and stretched beyond his limits.

It was standing room only on the morning express train, and he stood wearing a freshly-altered suit with the back of his head mashed up against the roof of the car. In twenty years riding the train, he'd never been so cramped. From his vantage point, he could see the little heads, tucked behind newspapers, chattering away on the phone, or retreating behind shuttered eyelids and pulsing earbuds.

At Union he realized he was stuck and couldn't easily dislodge himself. Twisting his broad hips and long legs to the edge of the aisle, he watched upside down as the passengers shoved under and past, paying him no more mind than they would a column in the station concourse.

Once the car was empty, he was able to kneel and bend until he came loose, and in a semi-squatting stance, still stiff, he waddled out the door. After unfolding to his full height, he looked up and down the tracks for the nearest exit. It was on the other side of the tracks. Seeing that no one was looking, he grabbed the CCTV camera and pointed it away, and in one great stride crossed from platform 5B to 5A. Squeezing through the narrow double exit doors, catapulting down the station steps, and finally swimming above a swirling stream of tiny heads on short, bifurcated pedestals, he made his way to street level.

It was too early for the sun. The city lights cast faint shadows in the dawn. Cabbies honked and there was a multilingual cacophony of loud and excited voices in the cab rank. Pedestrians and drivers dared and double dared over the last bit of amber in the traffic light. A homeless person, unable to get his attention, spat at him as he walked by holding a handkerchief to his face. A gaggle of teenage girls crashed into him and, on turning their heads, screamed and ran.

He hurried away himself. In two effortless steps he reached the opposite curb where he knocked over the pompous doorman of the Royal who was signaling a limousine to pull up. Getting to his feet, the servant, red-faced and ripe, with a tone that comes from years of service, launched into a fusillade of spiteful and contemptuous remarks. Mid-sentence, the lumbering colossus, provoked, gazed down on the round, red, balding head and squished it between thumb and forefinger.

He waited in a makeshift jail in the port lands, while the authorities debated their extrajudicial options, namely whether to ship him to the zoo or the museum. It was the museum. There, a new tailor—this one a PhD in anthropology—outfitted him with clothing suitable for a wide range of exhibits BCE.


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The author is a freelance writer and ESL instructor who lives on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario with his wife and two flat-coated retrievers. In 2012, he published his first book, Flash! Fiction.

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Author: Peter McMillan

Contributor: David Strong

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Habit assists her. Founded upon an irrepressible indulgence to sanctify the past, she picks up the black ceramic pot off the stove and surveys the room. Strewn newspapers carpet the dirt floor; a bony, spindly cat weaves in and out of the kitchen table’s legs purring for its morning meal of cheese and whatever other scraps inevitably fall. Satisfied that all is in order, she pours a cup and sits on a cracked oak chair, creaking perilously above its head. Nonplussed, it meanders from one leg to the other to ensure as much patronage as possible. Today it’s Gruyère and toasted crackers. Askance, she spies a dark purple binding on the fourth shelf. The gold embossed title has long since faded into the rusty lettering seen on the fishing trawlers swaying back and forth down at the docks.

“There it is,” she murmurs to herself while placing her finger on the rim and rubbing it full circle. Before she can move, the cat jumps on her lap and paws at the slice sitting on the saucer’s edge. Her hand slides over its head, pressing down its ears before slipping underneath to feel the sonorous purring. Its meditative rhythm is a welcome companion to morning’s first light. She closes her eyes, recalling sleep’s dreamy peace and anticipating those under the sun.

Thoughts of youth dance in her head. Sitting by her father’s feet, listening intently about explorers, architects, and other vanguard inventors. The wonders create a permanent smile on jubilant, fresh cheeks, now tallow and wrinkled. “Can I build a weathervane that captures the lightening someday,” she wonders aloud. “Of course dear, you can build anything you want.” Sundry tales twirl about in her head, enlivened by his intonation of anticipation and amazement. That is what life is meant to be. Yet, it doesn’t matter where she travels: Macchu Picchu, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, or Angkor Wat. The genius underpinning their glory is lost because he is not there. He was supposed to teach her how to make these adventures real. But his heart couldn’t take it. Though she tried, nothing—or more properly—no one could compare to his constant devotion. But life, as he taught it, told her not to give up, not to rest at base camp. Each day she dedicates her life to recapturing this truth; it lies in these books and the memory of his baritone giving each achievement its due.

The cat’s agility shows how movement and space, flowing fluidly from here to there, epitomizes the philosophy he imparted. It cocks its ears when a cacophony of feline shrills and bellows announces the daily trek down to the boats.

“They’re calling. Just remember to come back tonight.”

It perches itself on the windowsill, looking back before bounding down. Free from its kneading paws, she stands and walks towards her father’s monument, sidestepping the Sunday edition. Despite its age, no dust collects underneath her nails as she pulls its free. Her fingers trace the faded letters. It seems like yesterday when he stroked her hair and nothing of the world’s indifference entered into their home. Drifting back to the wooden chair, she opens the book, but the words lost their force long ago. Meaning occurs only through reminiscence, vivifying what was once felt. Closing it, she places her hand on the worn, grainy leather cover where he had so often placed his. This smallest of acts allows her to live in the moment and not the next, to isolate and luxuriate in an instant of love that encompasses both body and soul. A journey that surpasses all others.


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As an English professor at the University of Texas at Tyler, I have published extensively in non-fiction. “Memory’s Touch” is only my third endeavor into pure fiction. My most recent story is found in the summer issue of Full of Crow.

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Author: David Strong

Contributor: Eric Suhem

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Bill sat on an overstuffed bag of feathers, beaks, guts, spleens, stomachs, livers and eyes. He could hear the faint chirping and quacking emanate from the chair. He was in his den clicking at the television remote control feverishly, wisps of smoke rising. It was 6:02 p.m., and he finally settled on Channel 38 University of the Air, Sky and Galaxy. On the screen, a man was sitting at a wooden desk in front of a blackboard in a stark room. Suddenly the man at the desk, and the blackboard disappeared in a big ball of light that was filling the television screen. “Bill!” it roared, “you are not what you think you are, you are a stream of energy coursing through a body, a vessel, a shell. You are like me!” said the ball of light.

The quacks and chirps from the chair began to get louder and Bill snapped, “Ssshh birds, I’m trying to watch this!” As he uttered those words, the ball of light disappeared from the television screen, and the man reappeared at the desk, frantically hitting the blackboard with a steel pointer and quacking. Bill then slowly murmured, “Hello birds, thank you for letting me enjoy your vessels. When my vessel has deconstructed into a new form, and its pieces fly off in shards of flame, I hope you will enjoy the use of it, just as I have enjoyed the use of yours.”

The chirping and quacking continued from the chair as the ball of light returned to the television, saying, “Yes, you are just a stream of energy coming from the universe.”

Bill’s wife Norma was in the kitchen with their niece, cooking a chicken. Norma heard the commotion and entered the den, where she was instantly alarmed by her husband's appearance. “Bill, you look like you had too many of those 99 cent vitamin packets from the 7-11,” she said in a concerned tone, looking at the array of brochures on their coffee table. “Have you been reading more of those New Age transcendence pamphlets?”

“No dear, I’m fine,” he said, staring at a picture of mallards on the den’s fine-wood-grain-paneled wall.

“We have enough problems just trying to pay the bills, without your excursions into metaphysical whatnot,” said Norma, leaving the room as Bill slowly transformed into a bright ball of light.

When Norma returned to the den, Bill was gone, and on the television screen was a duck, sitting at the desk in front of the blackboard. “Now listen to me, Norma,” said the duck. Norma tried to use the remote clicker, but the television was stuck on Channel 38. "You have enjoyed our vessels, though we are all really one with the universe. Quark-Quark!...I mean Quack-Quack!"

The duck insinuated itself into her being, its webbed feet grabbing hold. It pecked at Norma's conscience, hunting for niblets of corn inside the inner reaches of her cortex gray matter, perching on a cactus of thought beneath the blue shine of her inner cranium. The duck’s bill pecked urgently, as Norma was transformed into a bright ball of light, joining Bill in a new consciousness, in tune with the cosmos.

Bill and Norma’s molecules seemed to have disappeared from the neighborhood, though it was rumored that they were still in the vicinity. Their niece went to the park’s duck pond every week, to sit and listen to the quacking.


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Eric Suhem dwells in office cubicles and ocean waves. His new book 'Dark Vegetables' can be found in the orange hallway (www.orangehallway.com)

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Author: Eric Suhem

Contributor: Pranas Perkunas

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I opened the door one morning to a new world. For the first time, the homeless cats weren’t crying; they asked me if I was hungry. The neighbors' demented dogs refrained from barking against their too-short leashes; instead, they sang sumptuous strains of ancient mermaid songs. I arrived late for work, but my normally severe manager just laughed, clicked his heels, and crooned this little ditty,

Here's a check that should tide you over
for a few million lifetimes or so;
you can stay and groove with us,
or you can happily go.


I surveyed the scene behind him, which consisted chiefly of a bevy of my now-lovely co-workers, their collective youth restored, and their formerly unfortunate features reformed to fit their individual tastes.

An Asian, cosplay princess shining among the others beckoned to me with one of her long, red, plastic boots; so I joined them on a levitating white couch for a while, and for the first time our flesh didn’t flinch to be with each other. We drank some Kool-Aid, but it didn’t kill us; and by the time I departed I was younger--better looking too! It was then that I noticed that one of my loafers had been replaced by a long, red, plastic boot.

In a delirium of damn-that-was-good, I stumbled into a street normally choked with traffic, yet there were no cars, just beaming young people smiling and holding hands. Seeing into my thoughts, one young man said, “Cars hurt people, and road kill ain’t kosher, man.” I tried to further converse, but no matter how quickly I ran, I couldn’t catch up to him as he strolled into the psychedelic sunset.

A singing seal sporting high-heels passed, “No more Re pub li cons and De mo cants-“ An English loon took up the tune, “No more giving our money to banksters!” A whirling carnival of emotions opened within me.

"Had God finally heard us?" I asked a soft, pretty child with hair like a field of dandelions roaring in the breeze.

“Nah, we finally had to fire the bum,” she said while taking a small sign from her basket brimming with keys and kaleidoscopes and hung it right around my neck. The sign sprouted a mouth like a plum and said, “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.”


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I teach English in the inner city, and I'm building a colossal Hello Kitty assault robot which I will use to avenge all abused creatures. My favorite authors are Kenneth Patchen and Crad Kilodney.

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Author: Pranas Perkunas