Contributor: Nicole Chapman

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The night before, my mother extracted the box of ashes from the back of my grandmother’s minivan where it had been resting for three days. I expected an ornate vase, a velvet drawstring bag, or a porcelain jar, something (anything) other than a plain cardboard box sealed with packing tape. The box sat on the dining room table overnight. I crawled out of bed and tiptoed through the house by the glow of the hallway nightlight to check to see if it had shifted.

In the morning, the box was gone and so was my family. I searched the house and then found them, sad silhouettes performing a ceremony in the early morning sun. The sliding glass door felt cool on my cheek. With one hand on the smooth, black door handle and the other clutching my grandmother’s beige, lace curtains, I watched through the glass as my mother and sister struggled to open the box under the evergreen pines. My grandmother sat beside them, observing their antics from a beach chair, sun hat on, folded crossword puzzle in lap, half-melted gin and tonic in hand.

My mother broke through the packing tape with a quick slice from my grandfather’s pocketknife. The cardboard flaps flew open in the breeze as if to let something inside escape. I was afraid the ashes would be carried away by the wind. Could a gust steal them from their rightful resting place in the rose bushes and deposit them instead in the neighbor’s lawn where the dog pees? I stole a quick breath of air and clutched the curtains tighter, as if I had the power to still the wind.

You’re being silly. Just go out there.

I slid the door open and stepped on to the water-worn deck. Leaning against the wooden rail, I squinted to see my family awkwardly shake dust into dust. The rose bushes were blooming with new buds, and I imagined for a moment that the flowers were a deeper pink, a purer white, a stronger red – all the colors I wanted them to be. But, I knew they would wilt at the start of next week’s cold front. My mother waved me over, but I stayed up on the deck, not wanting to walk through the grass in bare feet.


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Nicole Chapman is a Creative Writing MFA student, poet, and screenwriter at Full Sail University in Orlando, FL.

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Author: Nicole Chapman

Contributor: Caroline Kepnes

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It was such a mistake to start menstruating at a coffee shop in Silver Lake.Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only thing stupider would be menstruating in Santa Monica because then you'd have to find somewhere to throw stuff away. I should have gone to Hollywood to bleed. People get shot there. It's cool.
This cushy sea-foam green vinyl chair probably costs five grand and nobody else in here started the day with a Midol and a donut at 7-11, except maybe the girl washing dishes in the back. They're all so skinny. Even their skin is skinny. They look hydrated. Yet they're not drinking water. WTF? And the clothes, wow, these people don't just leaf through Lucky Magazine. They mark their favorite products with those freebie post-its and go out and actually buy the red pants.
Naturally, because I'm a day early, Scott Speedman is here—as in Ben from “Felicity”, not Noel. He is so serious, reading a script and listening to music made by musicians who probably grew up going to shows at The Greek and were careful to never get jazzed up about the shows, no matter how good they were. Excitement isn't something you display in Silver Lake. Excitement is for those sad sacks in the Valley.
Meanwhile, the guy who played Noel is probably fist-pumping and stoked in North Hollywood with lots of affable date rapists who prefer Starbucks. The Valley is prime for menstruating: more fat people, less lettuce, bigger trash cans. I would feel fine about bleeding near Noel. He was always so puffy and unsure of himself, nothing like these two self-proclaimed “women in film” (AKA pretend filmmaker and actress who had a line on “90210” three seasons ago) performing conversation for Speedman. They’re not on the rag. No way.
The actress looks too wan to get PMS and watch Beaches and the "filmmaker" looks like she lives in Los Feliz adjacent and over-thought her burgundy lipstick. The actress probably flaked on her last week, which was good timing because last week she was licking her fingers (Cool Ranch Doritos) and reading about Miley Cyrus' relationship. These are not things you can do right before you go to Silver Lake.
New people. Also not menstruating. A slave/nanny in too tight irregular exercise clothes she got at TJ Maxx holds the hand of a four year-old girl with cool accessories. The nanny is in her thirties and you can actually see her giving up on acting/writing/happiness. She looks like she has long heavy periods and knows the words to "Party in the USA" and owns a VHS box set of "Felicity". She speaks: "Claire, combining blueberries and cinnamon might alarm your pallet."
Poor nanny. She is so warped in the head from working and menstruating in Silver Lake that she's actually trying to do a great job cultivating Silver Lake's top export:
Snobs!
These pre-bleeding years matter a lot when it comes to raising superior beings. The nanny is killing it. You can tell by Claire's adultish eyes and non-laughing face and striped socks and penchant for scones that Claire is going to be a solid, dazzling nightmare of a human being one day. Her freshman roommate at Barnard will be on financial aid and eat Lean Cuisines and use Always pads with wings and Claire will make her feel so bad about herself just by looking at her. And you know what Claire's mom will put in the care package with non-toxic tampons and laxatives and satchels of scented flowers and shit?
Bags of coffee from this place, because unfortunately, it really is the best coffee in the world, so Claire will be right when she schools her financial aid receiving roommate. Bitches like Claire are right about a lot, damn it.
The nanny leans in: “Excuse me, I feel so bad, but do you have a tampon?”


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I was born and raised on Cape Cod and pretty much always liked writing stories. I live in Los Angeles and write about TV for Yahoo. My short film "Miles Away" will be premiering at a film festival possibly somewhere near you within the next few months.

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Author: Caroline Kepnes

Contributor: Chris Griglack

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He stands still in quiet contemplation as the heavens empty themselves around him. His mind wanders and his feet long to do the same, but they are still as the rain continues to fall.
Warm droplets soak into the tightly woven fibers of his suit, pressing close to flesh, running ever onward to some new place. He stands still as it washes over him and allows it to take him elsewhere.
The man in the suit remembers a different rain, or perhaps the same rain in a different place. The rain he remembers is lighter, a mist which hangs in the air like a fine net, waiting to ensnare any who might dare stride through it.
One child dares, though he is not snared by the mist's presence. He is energized by it, leaping from puddle to puddle and through its shimmering presence in the air. It sticks to his face as he runs, like sweat, a spiderweb, and a puppy's kisses all in one. The rain is his playground, his toy, his friend.
He remembers another rain, this one sharp and cold as ice. A rain which falls like knives against him as he walks a deserted highway. Raindrops which appear like bullets in the twin gaze of the headlights of the truck wrecked three miles back.
He wears a coat, but it is heavy and stiff from the freezing rain. Unrelenting it continues to acquaint itself with the top of his head, seeping ever downward, seeming to seek the very core of his being through eroding the outer layers of his self. He cries as he walks down that road, and the rain sweeps his tears away to new lands, estranged brothers at last reunited.
He remembers a rain which is not really a rain, yet borrows all its sensations. A crash of thunder lights a cluster of clouds far above, yet no water falls from their vaporous bodies. The smell of ozone is thick in the air, and the local flora stretch for the sky and gape their pores in anticipation, but they are to be disappointed.
The sweat rolls down his face in rivulets which form streams at his neck, pool where his thin shirt meets the waistband of his shorts, each movement spilling more through that seal until his legs feel submerged. The jungle is hot, but worse, it is humid. So humid that each breath threatens to drown him. The rain is tangible, as if it can be drawn forth from the air by hand. But there is no rain. Only thunder, sweat, and a tantalizing promise.
Each memory rises to the surface of the man in the suit like the earthworms rise at his presence. One after the other they surface and are swept away by the peaceful torrent which surrounds him.
He stays until he feels it is time to go. The rains lighten behind him as he walks where the wind blows. When he is hours gone the sun emerges and delivers back to him some of his waters. Droplets which have fallen for billions of years across the world delivered back to him as he continues his endless journey.
For it never really stops raining.
It just rains elsewhere.


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Chris Griglack is a lifelong Massachusetts resident with a degree in writing from UMASS Dartmouth. His original stories have been featured in Fear and Trembling, Microhorror, and Linguistic Erosion.

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Author: Chris Griglack

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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As I've told my wife too many times, the meaning of any poem hides in the marriage of cadence and sound. Vowels on a carousel, consonants on a calliope, whistles and bells, we need them all if a poem is to tickle our ears. Otherwise, the lines are gristle and fat, no meat.
Is it any wonder, then, my wife has had a problem, for decades now, with any poem I've given her to read for a second opinion. This is especially true when we both know the poem has no message and I simply want to hear the music, assuming there is some. Miles Davis made a living doing the same thing in jazz clubs. Why can't I have a little fun and give it a try even if my instrument is words?
The other night in bed I gave my wife my latest poem to read. I said it was fetal, not final. Afterward she said that reading this poem was no different than reading all the others I had given her over the years. She had thought I'd improve by now. Maybe I should switch to fiction or the essay, she suggested, or else stick with editing the manuscripts of others since I had made a decent living as an editor for many years.
"You've been writing poetry for decades," she said, "but reading a poem like this is like looking through a kaleidoscope while listening to a harpsichord."
Point well taken, I thought, point well said. The nuns for whom I toiled all those years in grammar school would have liked my wife. They might have even recruited her to join their order.
Then I asked her what a man should do if he has careened for years through the caves of his mind spelunking for the right line for a poem only to hear his wife say that reading his poem was like "looking through kaleidoscope while listening to a harpsichord."
Should I quit writing? Start drinking? After all I quit drinking when I started writing and I discovered that the hangovers from both were equally debilitating.
The following morning she said, "You should never quit writing."
At that moment, she was enthroned at the kitchen table, as regal as ever in her fluttery gown and buttering her English muffin with long, languorous strokes Van Gogh would envy.
"You should write even more,” she said, “all day and all night, if need be. After all, my line about the 'kaleidoscope and harpsichord' needs a poem of its own. It's all meat, no gristle, no fat."


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Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work appear in Linguistic Erosion and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Gary Clifton

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Freddy and Jimmie Bob sat on Freddy's back porch, chugging shots of shine, chasing it with Budweiser. The air at dusk was still sticky with humidity, but the temperature had dropped and mosquitoes weren't bad yet. The old man shuffled up through the trees in the fading light.
"Hey, Arthur," Freddy said. "Meet my brother Jimmie Bob...plumber up in Hot Springs, drove down to visit." Freddie circled his ear with a finger and pointed his chin at Arthur. Jimmie Bob nodded understanding.
"Hot Springs," the old man struggled up the steps. Ancient, with a permanent forward stoop, his bushy hair and scraggly beard had dodged the comb for months. "Must be sixty mile."
"More like 97...this far into Louisiana here," Jimmie Bob scratched his nose with the back of a hand and took a hit of shine.
Freddy, with more tattoos than teeth, grunted over his huge gut as he reached into a cooler at his feet. He handed old Arthur a Budweiser and pointed to a wicker chair.
"Plumber, huh," Arthur slumped in the seat. "Gotta leak in my kitchen. You fix it, I could pay...maybe later." The old man filled his mouth with beer.
"Got no tools...on vacation." Jimmie Bob swatted an insect and drunkenly spilled shine in his lap.
"Maybe come back tomorrow?" The old man looked over half glasses perched on his nose.
"Told ya. Crazy as hell," Freddy whispered.
"Whut's that? Gettin' crazier 'n hell?" Arthur echoed, his belly laugh like tearing cardboard. "Cain't hardly hear a damned thing.” He cupped a hand to his left ear.
"Brain's prolly pickled." Jimmie Bob tossed a dead soldier into the darkness. "You 'member how nuts grandpa Chadsey got?"
"Maybe oughta to be in a home," Freddie said He glanced at Arthur out of the side of his eye.
"Home? Gotta leak in my home. Iffen you come fix it, I'd pay you when I get my check," Arthur said. "You maybe come back down from Little Rock?"
"Oh for God's sake," Freddy roared. His beer-belly quivered like jello. "Looney old fool. Jimmie Bob's on vacation. He ain't gonna do no plumbin' on vacation...an' he livin' up in Hot Springs...not no Little Rock"
Arthur drained his beer and flipped the can into the weeds. He peered wistfully at Freddy's cooler. "Did I ast if y'all knowed a plumber?" Arthur cackled. The vacant eyes didn't match his lively laugh.
"Damnation, old man, lemme see what kinda tools I got in the truck." Jimmy Bob stood. Unsteady, he leaned on the frail porch railing. "You got any pliers, Freddy?" Tall and skinny, he slugged down a double shot of shine. Excess whiskey dripped off his thin goatee.
“Dammit, Jimmy Bob, you got no need to…”
“Aw hell, he sorta makes me think of Uncle Chadsey. You live long ‘nough, you gonna get old too.” He moved down the steps and turned toward his old pickup.
Arthur, grinning, shuffled over and snagged another beer.


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Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over sixty short fiction pieces published or pending with online sites. He's been shot at, shot, stabbed, sued, and is currently retired. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: P.M. Brandvold

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My mother and father met on New Year’s Eve at an office party. They were drunk and lonely, which is almost certainly a requirement for attending such a party. Mother was 27, and the receptionist of some CEO on the top floor. Father was a 29 year old accountant on the fifteenth floor. By all laws of the universe they should never have met. But fate was with me as I tried to enter the world.

My recipe: an empty office, a desk cleared in haste, and a lot of tequila. My mother found out soon after. My father knew shortly after that. He wasn’t happy. He never really was happy, though I think he just hated his job because, let’s face it, nobody wants to get with an accountant. They might catch boring.

There were fights after that. They were constantly yelling, though they avoided each other for the most part. But when they were together, it was a storm of persuasive tones turned to angry shouts. Father didn’t want me, and Mother didn’t know what she wanted. She couldn’t be a single mother on her receptionist salary. She didn’t know if she could even handle motherhood. Father won her over.

My curse is that I existed when I should not have. The punishment for my crime is watching the world from without, never entering it. I can see my ghost. My future echoes show me what I could be, but none of it will happen. I watch, a child born of the short spark of lust.


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Phillip Brandvold is a writer and musician based out of St. Paul, MN. He is currently attending school at Concordia University, St. Paul.

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Author: P.M. Brandvold

Contributor: Beth J. Whiting

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Mr. Sawyer needed to rest his body so he took his brain out on the front porch. After resting he went to the front porch to get his brain back and he saw that it had disappeared.
He asked the neighbor across the street if she saw anything.
The neighbor was an elderly person like himself. She was rocking in her chair, crocheting.
“I saw some kids who were playing soccer take it with them. They were kicking it around.”
“WHAT?” He yelled.
“Yeah they were kicking it like a ball.”
He was nervous and fidgeting.
“Did you see where they went?”
“They went to play out in the park.”
The park was only a block away. Mr. Sawyer anxiously walked to the park, cursing the boys.
The park was large and green. He saw two boys there. He knew it must have been them so he yelled to the boys.
“Where did you put my brain?”
“Oh that. We got tired of it. It’s by the tree in the shade.”
He walked across the field to the tree in the corner. He found his brain and it was covered with ants.
He wanted to yell at the kids but decided it would be useless. If they were willing to play with someone’s brain, they wouldn’t learn anything from a lecture.
He looked at it. Mr. Sawyer sighed. He would have to take it to the brain doctor tomorrow to get it cleaned and polished


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I was born in 1983. I live in Mesa, AZ. I was born to a family of brainy eccentrics.

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Author: Beth J. Whiting

Contributor: Jade Kolbo

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The service was nice. An old man with a wrinkled tie had read the eulogy. In the front of the tiny chapel, old ladies had patted their eyes with handkerchiefs, careful not to mess up that cheap red lipstick and blue eye shadow. Most people paying their respects had left their children at home, much to the relief of the grieving family who had ached for some peace. There had been no coffin or urn in front of the altar. They had to go without saying their goodbyes to something they could physically see.

Mutterings of the latest news in the investigation had circulated throughout the dim room by the end of the service. Some people had made comments saying that the family should have waited for the body to be found before planning a major service. Others had mentioned that the family needed some kind of closure and had every right. A select number of people had said at least some of the family members must have been the ones responsible since no other suspects had been found.

The grief-stricken family seemed like they had tried to ignore any gossip that had been making its way throughout the room. The father had tapped his foot in a clear state of agitation. The mother had held on to the sobbing kids. At the end of the service they had revealed the headstone that would mark the empty grave. "He doesn't lie here, but we loved him anyway."


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Jade Kolbo studies Journalism at Concordia University, St. Paul.

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Author: Jade Kolbo

Contributor: Kristina England

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Mary turned the corner onto Contel Street. Her feet hit the pavement in careful strides. Every few minutes, she winced.

After 5 miles, she stopped and leaned against a street sign. She bent over and massaged her left leg.

"Come on, baby. You can do it."

The truth was that Lefty wasn't a baby. She was more like a worn-out house wife. If she could talk, she would have told Mary to go take a walk, but not in the literal sense.

Lefty let out a tired sigh that ran along Mary's nerves.

Mary winced again.

"Okay, that's enough for today."

Lefty sighed again. She could feel herself giving out, the fall that came with it. She didn't bother to warn Mary. They had been here too many times before.

Nothing Lefty did could stop Mary, short of going limp for good. And Lefty really didn't care for that option, but what choice did she have?


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

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Author: Kristina England

Contributor: Chris Sharp

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Ten years ago, they had each been on the high school state championship wrestling team. The three of them agreed to have a lunch a month before their momentous tenth high school anniversary. It was Anthony who said that the lunch would serve as an elixir of youth for them, since even though they were each only 28 years old, they were already missing some of the irresponsibility that went with their high school years.

They settled on the Islands restaurant in Old Town Pasadena for their meeting. It was the one restaurant to assure Anthony that the waiters and waitresses would wear shorts and talk to them like they were the place’s party hosts. As expected, Anthony was the first to be at the scene. He was also the first one to secure the alumni directory to get the right phone numbers

Anthony had been the only one among the party to reach the semi-finals of his weight division in the state wrestling championship. His friend Chuck had reached the quarter-finals, and that had been no surprise. The big surprise was Jeff reaching the quarter-finals. No one on the team had predicted this, not even the generally optimistic coach. And yet with the greatest wrestling match of his life, Jeff had piled up enough points for his high school to win the state trophy.

After Jeff arrived last to the table, they all ordered the same hamburgers and fries. Then Anthony picked on Chuck’s left ring finger and said, “Oh a ring of despair, caught in the marital lair.” Chuck pointed to Anthony’s ring as well. “You must be talking about marriage for everyone else,” Chuck said.

They both had to look at Jeff’s ring finger next, with its suddenly glaring lack of a wedding ring. “But Jeff’s holding out on us,” said Anthony.

Jeff laughed as if that were a way of saying something back.

After that moment, Jeff believed he had somehow conjured up a fence between him and his companions. Inside that fence, the lunch was taking place, but then nothing was happening around Jeff. He sat there, alone.

Anthony was talking about his new job as an instructor of biology at a state university. Then Chuck spoke of his recent days as an associate district attorney in the county.

“So where are you these days, Jeff?” Anthony said, looking at Jeff abruptly.

From the beginning, Jeff was aware that this issue would come up sooner or later, and he was happy that it came this early.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been in and out of mental wards,” he said.

“What?” said Chuck?

“You have become a psychologist?” said Anthony.

“No. I’ve become a certified psychotic.”

Then the other faces froze, but there was coolness in the freezing. There were dimples on the other men’s faces that stayed on hold for the rest of the presumed joke.

Jeff decided to get out the reality of his issue with a few sobering details.

“When I was a freshman at UCLA, I took on a coveted campus job right in the middle of the administration building. Then I signed on for too many classes my very first semester. I should have seen what was happening when I couldn’t sleep at night, but I chose denial. When I heard voices in my head in the middle of a class I told myself it was just being half-asleep with rapid-eye-movement dreaming. That was the beginning of my first nervous breakdown.”

Anthony visibly lost some of his coolness to replace it with clear irritation over what was happening to the lunch. “That isn’t like the Jeff I knew,” he said at last.

“No, Anthony, that isn’t the Jeff you knew. You only knew my little boy.”

“What’s this now? You have a little son now?’

“I had a little boy, the one you knew in high school and you’re confusing me with him. He did things I could never do myself. But on the other hand we had some key things in common.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re seeing the Jeff you were ten years ago as your little son or your little boy now. Is that part of your psychosis? Or is that word ‘psychosis’ really the one you want to use, Jeff, in order to tell us that guy who won that state championship for us wasn’t you.”

“Of course it wasn’t me. All I can do these days is go in and out of psychotic episodes.”

Jeff was starting to feel badly now, not only for himself but because he was clearly slowing down everyone else’s celebration. Then Anthony and Chuck changed the subject, bringing up others they had gone to school with a decade ago. Jeff decided to hide himself behind his food and drink until the lunch was over.

“Goodbye,” he said to Anthony and Chuck.

He went back to the same house where the little Jeff had lived when he had become a local wrestling star. On a table in the boy’s bedroom the old high school yearbook sat in the place of prominence. Immediately Jeff turned to the pages about the wrestling season where the little Jeff by consensus of the team held up the state trophy.

“Just because I’m so proud of you, Jeff,” he said, purposefully aloud, “it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of me.”


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Chris Sharp has numbers of flash-fiction short stories in Linguistic Erosion, Yesteryear Fiction, Weirdyear, and Daily Love as well as longer fiction listed by Google under “Short stories by Chris Sharp.” His book “Dangerous Learning” is being distributed by Barnes & Noble.

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Author: Chris Sharp