Issue #12
Forgotten by Jo Davies

He’d been under the stairs for years, forgotten and neglected. This wasn’t what his family had envisaged when they’d sold him.

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Bone Deep by Anita Goveas

No-one’s sure what going to happen next. Today, its ‘acids and bases’. They’ve dipped litmus paper into milk and ketchup and written down the results.

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Los Muertos by Tommy Dean

The car—a black shadow—not there a second before, weaved drunkenly toward the mailbox, before eclipsing the end of their driveway, veering toward the other side of the road.

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The Easy Way by Michelle Ross

All their life together, his wife has denounced the gadgets he’s acquired. The pole that extends to sweep ceiling cobwebs: they own a ladder.

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Playing Pretend by Jacalyn Eis

You see him watching her – the dapper little boy dressed like a pre-school banker, in his navy blazer, a blue bow tie, and his blond hair combed smoothly to the side. 

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On Her Finger by Jason Jackson

You’d been watching him sleep, his head resting on his arms at the table, but now he was unfolding himself like some sun-woken, hibernating creature.

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The Bronze Medal by Vincent James Perrone

She wants to meet the pig—snout down, paraded through the town square of sodden earth and
stump dimples, now trailed by serpentine line of freshly showered farmer with tomato noses and
breath prematurely soured from all that auctioneer talk.

Prudence by Christy Stillwell

They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny. First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people.

Carry On by Lucinda Kempe

Once there was a man who loved his donkey, but his donkey didn’t love him back. The donkey loved an eggshell, but the eggshell didn’t love it back.

Husband by Sara Cappell Thomason

I want a house, a wife, a steak dinner and all my bills paid on time. I want to settle down in a house and get paid. Dinner from my wife served on time

Gallows Pole by Kathy Hoyle

In the dead of summer, while the whiptails hide in sagebrush shadows, and everything blisters in the amber heat and there ain’t nothin but buzzards hummin for miles around, a hanged man dances on a gallows pole.