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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Café Mozart Dreamin’ by Tracey Meloni

Judie bangs on my hotel door. “The dressmaker is here! Hurry! You have Christmas lunch with Noah at Café Mozart at 1PM!” 

Fun House by Robert Scotellaro

She’d gotten the fun house mirrors at an auction and had them put up in the spare bedroom.

The Girl In Purple by Bobbie Ann Mason

Near dawn, Dennis Moore saw the iron gate to the courtyard inch open and the wisp of a girl squeeze through, clanging the gate behind her. Two minutes later, on the boardwalk, she halted as if for an invisible dog, then resumed her dog-walker gait. He followed her...

Initiation by Stuart Dybek

The doors snap open on Addison, and the kid in dirty hightops and a sleeveless denim jacket that shows off a blue pitchfork tattooed on his bicep jogs forward beneath a backward baseball cap and grabs the purse off a babushka’s lap.

Conversation in Hotel Lounge by Lydia Davis

Two women sit together on the sofa in the hotel lounge, bent over and deep in conversation.  I am walking through, on my way to my room.