Paul didn’t know what the music was at first, only that it woke him up. His half-conscious mind had run through a few possibilities – something from a dream, or from his clock radio, customarily turned up a few notches too loud and tuned to a rock station, all the better to shock him back […]
Fiction
Dina Guidubaldi: Press Repeat
I knew this place would exist someday, back when things the size of quarters came in boxes the size of shoes. So now there are manmade trash mountains, and now I emerge from my solar penthouse every sunset and watch the workers roving like machines over the heaps of bottles and cans. They do it […]
Sarra Alpert: Will Tell You Later
Username: metzger86 Why You Should Get To Know Me: I have firmly convinced myself — against all odds and manners of social conditioning and control — that our culture, society, and “civilization” are not only absurd and illegitimate but also unreal. Yes. Un-real. I am not speaking metaphorically. This is the world of bad dreams, […]
Scott Lambridis: Doris
Despite what the newspaper said, O’Malley knew the true cause of the accident. Inside the trolley, in the periphery of his consciousness and beyond his recognition, an image had formed of this sort of duck, a white sort of duck whose everything that should have been yellow was instead a pale pink like a young […]
Nell Joslin: The Lesson
A child stood alone in the large foyer of a high-ceilinged home, chewing a lock of her hair. She was wearing a winter coat with the hood tied under her chin. On the floor beside her she had dropped several leaves of sheet music. Leading off of the foyer were French doors whose panes were […]
E.A. Durden: In the Prison Garden
First the German prisoner promised her carnations. “What color do you like?” he said. His English was passable. He showed too many teeth. He had no business smiling at an old maid. “Can you sign for this?” Edith said, and held out her clipboard. She was delivering bread from her family’s bakery to the prison […]