Babyface Rafferty

​by Joe Bongiorno     (2406 Words)
Burning by Alvaro Tapia | Flickr

​The whirring hum of the cryptocurrency rig resonated through the Hochelaga apartment. Accustomed to the noise, Benjy Rafferty rewound the VHS amateur pro wrestling tape. Nailed it, he thought with pride as he watched his younger, teenage self in star-studded tights, the babyface scripted to be cheered on by the fans, execute a perfect piledriver on the heel, Vince Vendetta. At sixteen, one year after the tape was filmed, he dropped out of school and gave up wrestling to sell pot and counterfeit bills full time, making more money than his mother did as a receptionist at the dental clinic.

What time was it? Wednesday’s first light shone through the living room curtains. He finished the bottle of Crème de Menthe, the only liquor left in the cabinet and snorted a ten-milligram line of oxy off his roommate’s thesaurus. The rush was immediate. 

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She Sang a Song
​She Did Not Sing


​She wanted to write a song. 
​
She did not want to write a song.
​ 
She loved music and how it made her
feel and was born to write and play it. 
​
She might have been tone deaf. 

​She never felt more alive than when
performing in front of people. 

She was often terrified and never far
from bed. ​

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​by Dan Tremaglio     (366 Words)

"I have a mandolin, I play it all night long, it makes me want to kill myself" --The Magnetic Fields
by Seth Tisue | Flickr
​Recommended Reading 
As If Hell Were A Real Place
Michael Patrick Welch / McSweeney's
​
​From the Archives
Blind Ambition
Paul Hostovsky / 4/17/2016
Six-Six-Sixer - Len Kuntz
Bio:​ ​​Len Kuntz; writer, reader, and friend.
Title: She Wanted Me Dead and Buried
Sixer: Thank God I brought a shovel.

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​Doggerel [ daw-ger-uhl ] adj. 1. (of verse) comic or burlesque, and usually loose or irregular in measure. 2. rude; crude; poor.