Stories

Role Reversal

6/14/2019

by LEAH MUELLER

One Sunny Afternoon Gone Wrong by Aaron M. / Flickr

You don’t know how you ever landed in the western suburbs of Chicago. Aurora, Illinois. Forget Wayne’s World, the place sucks. It’s miles from the city. As far west as the train can go before it has to turn around at a big roundhouse. Some entrepreneur transformed the building into a brewpub imaginatively named, “The Roundhouse.” Not a bad place--in fact, the only good aspect of Aurora. That and the Paramount Theater, which shows movies like “West Side Story” on Wednesday nights for a quarter.

Your dance classes and the Vergil Gilman bike trail have kept you from going insane. You work out a lot when you’re depressed. You’re in good shape, which means you’re truly miserable.

No one else seems happy, either. Even your Christian chiropractor’s elderly receptionist whispered to you that her husband smokes pot. She congratulated you for filling out the intake form honestly. You were almost honest. You said you used marijuana once a day, but it’s more like twice. You’d smoke pot all day long, but your brain would turn into static.

Time To Go Home

6/1/2019

by CHRIS DIGIORGIO

Green Room by !Koss / Flickr

I slept until early afternoon. In the evening I went for some drinks in a hole-in-the-wall down a small alleyway. Old dusty bottles stood in front of a tarnished mirror behind the bar. I looked at my face and saw a stranger. As I was leaving, I heard live music coming out of the bar next door, so I wandered over to see what the noise was all about.

The place was small and dark and smoky. I spied Stephen hunched over at the end of the bar and ambled up to him. He had long before discovered the pleasures of wormwood-derived alcohol, which he called the “little green fairy” or just simply “my goddess,” like the poets of old.

“Greetings Gregory, how are you this fine evening,” he said, swishing around his glass. "Will you be partaking in my goddess also?”

She Sang a Song She Did Not Sing

5/11/2019

by DAN TREMAGLIO

"I have a mandolin, I play it all night long, it makes me want to kill myself" -—The Magnetic Fields
by Seth Tisue | Flickr

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.

She did not own an alarm clock because
she could open her eyes at any exact
minute and more often passed the entire
night pacing the villa of her imagination
in the nude and moonlight.

Babyface Rafferty

5/11/2019

by JOE BONGIORNO

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. The fidgeting and tapping of his hands and feet let up; the buzzing of his ADHD came to a full stop. The painkiller’s weight and warmth amplified by the three-day binge. Now that the edge was taken off, he leaned his head back and smirked at the ceiling.

Foremost in His Mind

4/2/2019

by GLENN A. BRUCE

Protest.20 by Elvert Barnes / Flickr

I walk into his office, after hours. No one in the building, guards downstairs didn’t see me.

Fuckwads.

His office is as plain as he is, as dully average as the man himself, aside from the golf trophies, all won at company events, so they’re meaningless to anyone other than him or the people who come in his office on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis. His life is broken up into meaningless chapters of time.

His name is Rory and he’s every bit the asshole you would imagine with a name like that. Rory Mavers. Mavers. (I laugh.) It takes the edge off his first name and gives him a feminine quality which I’m sure he abhors but convinces himself otherwise. He’s that way. About everything. Everything.

Unsubscribed

3/2/2019

by L. MACK

iBrokeIt by Derek Gates / Flickr

Digital influencer craycray died last week in an incident that had earned her 20 million views as of press time and a special commendation from the Darwin Awards.

craycray, born Emma Smith, clawed her way to fame through decades of exhibitionism, and clung to the spotlight with an uncanny gift for exploiting public spectacle and emerging technologies. This talent earned her widespread condemnation – the Poet Laureate of the United States famously described her as “a soul-sucking crater of vapidity and selfishness” – and millions of devoted fans.

Born in 1982, craycray was an early adopter of all technology, rising to fame in the mid90s with a “UniSoCam,” a 24/7 live videofeed of her sorority bedroom. After her expulsion, she gained international notoriety with her blog, mememememe.com, which TIME called “a biohazardous train wreck, which seems to draw its influences equally from the confessional and the act of projectile vomiting.”

Passenger

9/9/2017

by SARAH BARKER

Waiting for the Bus by Michael Labrecque-Jessen / Flickr

A spot of firm, grey snow next to a bus stop stands as an exhibit of a modern Midwestern woman’s daily pilgrimage to her cubicle.

Oh, that rise from the dark, warm of bed now happens with the regularity of the sunrise. Bitter coffee, no sugar because this belly isn’t getting any firmer. A slap of cold water on the face. Toothpaste stinging the back of her throat. Flannel pajamas eschewed for a crisp suit.

These banalities and the woman is out of the house, on the curb. No one else uses her stop. It’s like the bus sign was erected with her in mind, like it was crucial to the state of the world for her to reach the office by nine.

Her husband used to drive her, but he died about three years ago. She was twenty-three at the time and had never bothered to get her license because she so enjoyed him driving her to work: his rough palm pressing against her thigh, husky voice crooning along with the radio.

Portrait of a Kingdom

9/9/2017

by WARREN J. COX

Pink Castle Piñata in the Gutter by Drew Leavy / Flickr

The phone alarm sings its melody at six thirty, and I begin my slow rolling on the carpeted floor. My typical exile. There are ill-defined darkly aches in my legs beneath my woolly checkered jammy-pants, and there are acidic grumblings in my astro-gastro-gut. I know it’s a long way to standing up, but I have to get there.

By six fifty I’m outside holding the trumpet case awaiting the child-king who is still being processed, confined strictly to the bathroom until the final moment, by the matriarch. I am staring up at the slightly more than half moon, which I more and more believe is like a big blown-up bug eye, perhaps that of a Robber fly or blue damselfly. It could be a frog eye, too, I reflect, but I decide it belongs to a blue damselfly because then it’s easier to imagine (I’m aware I’m forcing the pareidolia) that there is a gigantic one of those up there staring at or past me; its body, obviously, is camouflaged perfectly in that shade of way-too-early sky blue.

The other eye, meanwhile, is looking off toward Eurasia, North Africa.

The Existentialists

9/9/2017

by PAUL SMITH

Sunoco by Chris / Flickr

The two men drove the rented car on the Expressway up from the airport. They were looking for Anderson Road. Once they found Anderson Road, they would look for the Sunoco station on the corner of it and Linebaugh, and then for the Puerto Rican that ran it.

It was not a long drive. Under different circumstances, it could have been pleasant even, so the men talked. They talked softly, without raising their voices, but steadily, as if something was about to happen and they would be part of it.

“So this guy’s a manic-depressive?” Stanley asked.

“A manic-depressive, which according to Jung, or Adler, I forget which, is most susceptible.”

“One of the four basic personality types. Wait a minute. Shouldn’t he be choleric or something? You know – hot-tempered."

Chess / Utah Agave

9/9/2017

by KYLE HEMMINGS

Chess by Nick Stenning / Flickr

Chess

In the park, where voices are low and gathering in numbers, and the gaps of silence mean someone is straining to hear, Munch plays chess with a war veteran who helped take a desert city and wipe out any late afternoon mirages.

"Death was so hard on the eyes," he says, "and the accidental casualties we had to deny."

I'm sitting on a bench across from the two, taking small bites out of a Bavarian ham and cheese sandwich from the family-owned deli around the corner. Munch, his forehead creased with deep lines of concentration, his pockmarked skin around his cheeks oozing sweat, moves his bishop to take the old veteran's knight. In turn, Munch loses his bishop to the old veteran's queen. The old man looks up at Munch, shakes his head.

"The world will end in approximately fifteen days, no more than thirty. I read it in the stars."

Pterrorshark vs. Sharkadactl / That Day in the School Yard

4/16/2017

by SAUL LEMEROND

Tiburon Volador by Jc Olivera / Flickr

Pterrorshark vs. Sharkadactl

I had stopped, long ago, waiting for a movie to come out that could redefine the genre. It’s not done anymore. Studios are too interested in their precious international dollar to spend any money or take any chances because everybody already knows the formula to set off a blockbuster in Beijing or Bali. Film is a dead, the Yuan and the Rupee have killed it, and though we visit its grave every now and again when we re-watch films like Jaws or The African Queen, there’s always a melancholy attached because something inside tells you this is it. It was fun while it lasted but it’s over. Most times I sit in my theater seat expecting just another movie as I’ve abandoned hope of an actual cinematic experience. But I was wrong, and I’m glad to say I was because Pterrorshark vs Sharkadactl is a tour de force. Man vs nature vs shark vs nuclear power vs the digital age, the film combines this country’s post 911 anxiety with what’s left of our communal Cold War nuclear paranoia.

The Pterrorshark (the ‘P’ is silent) has two heads, and each head two mouths, all of which breath atomic fire. The right head is of a shark, which surprises no one, and the second head is a lion’s head, which surprises some because they don’t expect to see a lion head on something called a Pterrorshark, which also has three pairs of wings. A set of bat wings, dove wings, and what look to be the wings of a flying squirrel. It has the body of a shark and is the size of the empire state building. The giant beast exists as the result of radioactive genetic experimentation, is considered by the people who created it a danger to human existence, and is encased in lead under the Yucatan Peninsula by order of the president.

Your Daddy's Daddy

4/15/2017

by CATHERINE MOORE

Roll Tide by Paull Young / Flickr

Eldred Hagan had been in possession of his great-grandmother’s engagement diamond for near two decades when he decided to take action. Well, maybe possession was too strong a word since it was stolen five years prior, but on the afternoon that ring was syphoned out of the muddy waters at Burnt Springs he was standing in front of the consignment section of Larry’s Gun & Pawn where Larry’s wife leaned over the counter in a provocative way. It was about his favorite place to be especially when Larry was off fishing in the Burnt.

“They have lots of these online dating sites now,” she said in a way that made online sound dirty.

“Don’t think my daddy would approve of me seeking the hand of a stranger, ma’am.”

“I reckon since WJ’s been six-feet under for a couple of decades, you should stop minding what he’d think. And who says anything about marriage?” she added a wink.

Call It What It Is

4/15/2017

by CHAD W. LUTZ

Chair by Thomas Hawk / Flickr

“That chair is putrid!” I shouted at my partner. “Get it out of here!”

We’d spent the better part of two hours transporting the cathedra across town and now that we were standing on the sidewalk outside our building I decided I’d had it.
“It’s too heavy. I’m tired. Let’s just leave it here. This was pointless, anyway.”

“Well,” he said coolly, lighting a Parliament Light, “then that is your life.”

“What do you mean, ‘That is your life’? Why do you always say things like that?”

“Because you always say things like that,” he said back, exhaling a rather lengthy drag.

I threw my hands up in the air, disgusted. “The day is ruined. Let’s do this some other time.”

But my partner never moved. He just stood there, smoking his cigarette, enjoying the act more than I’d ever admit I wanted him to in the still pale early morning sunlight.

1-800-CALL-GOD

4/15/2017

by DL SHIREY

Churchsign-6 by Brooke Witlon / Flickr

Duìyú zhōngguó qǐng àn yī. Pulse dos para español. For English, press three.

Thank you for calling 1-800-CALL-GOD. Our menu has changed, so please listen to the entire message before making a selection. At any time you may repeat this message by pressing four on your telephone keypad.

To leave a confession for a minor sin, press one. For a list of mortal sins and current penance for each, press two. To find an authorized place of worship, press the pound key followed by your five-digit zip code. To report any personal religious experience, including prophetic dreams, saintly or angelic visions, and suspected demonic possession, press three. To talk to God, please stay on line. Your call will be answered in the order in which you called.

They're Kind of Turtles

1/16/2017

By BEN SLOTKY

Tortoise and Grass by Tambako The Jaguar / Flickr

At what point is it okay to tell your kids that they’re dumb? Like when should you tell them that they’re dumb? And I know, I know. There’s never a good time, right? Like I know, you’ll always have an excuse for why you don’t tell them they’re dumb. Maybe you’re too busy, maybe you’ve got things to do. That could happen, right?

[crouching down, looking out into light]

That’s a possibility, you’ve got a lot of things to do, you can’t tell them they’re dumb all of the time, right?

Or maybe they’re about to get smart. Maybe they’re, right, maybe they’re like almost not going to be dumb anymore, yes, I get that. Maybe it’s close to their birthday or Christmas. You don’t want to spoil it by being like, “Hey, you’re dumb!” I get that ma’am, I do and I do but what I’m asking here is, and I’ll go ahead and say it again, and I’ll hunch over a bit here, like this here, and what I’m asking is when?

Is it okay?

[Looks up, slight smile.]

Greatness

1/16/2017

by ARRON BURROWS

Squishface #1 by Lynae Zebest / Flickr

Going over the Walt Whitman Memorial bridge, I see a sign that declared, ”Greatness never quits!” I think about that sign, until my father drops my wife and me off at the Philadelphia airport. It’s raining. Greatness, just what does that mean?

We get pushed, shoved, licked, and prodded through security. Make our way to gate E8 and sit in the waiting area. I wonder if any of the people around us will ever achieve greatness: the girl smiling at her phone with the travel pillow, the two older women sitting on the floor playing Mahjong, the couple whispering in each other’s ears, or the guy with the long beard staring at me as I write this. He smiles. If you could only count using your teeth, this guy would be limited to bunches of three.

He is rocking back and forth, glaring at me. I’m getting more concerned. A piece of food is dangling from his beard. I think it’s ham. Other passengers have begun to move away from him. My wife mentions that perhaps we should also move. No. I will not be frightened; Greatness never quits.

Too Many Words

1/16/2017

by RASMENIA MASSOUD

Word by Tinnytintin / Flickr

I tell people she's dead. It isn't the truth, but it isn't a lie. Breathing isn't proof of life. Breathing sometimes happens only because the body hasn't caught up yet. It will sooner or later. In time, her body will realize that she's already gone. Not because she's special, but because it happens to everyone.

Explanations are exhausting. Telling people she died is easier than explaining why I don't talk to her. Why there is no place for her in my life. Why I despise her.

Most people think hating makes a person bad. That anger is a negative thing. Good for them. They found a happier way. In their ignorance, they have no idea how these things can keep a person alive.

Really alive. More than just breathing.

My Idea For This Story / Dear Wonderful Stranger

11/30/2016

by ELIZEYA QUATE

The Feet by Alessio Michelini / Flickr

My Idea For This Story

My first idea for this story was to build a page for homicidal sentences. They would be the toughest, meanest sentences anyone had seen in a long while. As soon as the reader opens to the first page: *blam-blam*, there they are, the sentences, just going at it.

Whoah, thinks the reader. That's blood. That blood is real.

These sentences would be criminals. They would have escaped from burned-down asylums. They would want to dance the way skeletons want to dance; with their whole bodies missing at once. They would be crude and nasty. They would behave badly. And then they would die in wanton spectacles of violence.

That didn’t work out, so my second idea for this story was to make a story that was a story about writing this story itself, like a self-zapping lightning bolt that strikes itself over and over again. This would be the paragraph where you’d get a sense of whether or not this sort of thing could hang actually together.

Me and Nettie

11/29/2016

by SCOTT McCLELLAND

First Food by Jenny Cu / Flickr

January 3, 1964

Our Ma died three days after President Kennedy was killed, and I reckon Daddy must’ve thought the whole world was coming apart on him then, ‘cause he didn’t have no idea how to take care of me, a nine-year-old boy, or worse, my little sister Nettie, who’d just turned three.

When Miss Jaskey, from the County Office, come to see if we was okay, there weren’t nothing to eat in the house ‘cept three jars of baby food from when Nettie was just a little bitty. We’d had six jars the day before, but Daddy come in the kitchen and ate two jars of sweet peaches, then left us on our own, while he went down to Rusko’s Superette to get another box of beer—that he drank warm—before knocking out on the davenport again. I fed Nettie one jar of mushed peas, and then hid them last three jars in a cubbyhole where the milkman used to leave our milk and cottage cheese.

Why I Can't Fly With My Harp

11/28/2016

by BOBBIE WAYNE

Ye Olde Harp by Baptiste Pons / Flickr

I learned that Moses was dead from Fred Koller, the dry-witted songwriter who had told me his acquaintance Moses could build me a harp case. Fred called from Nashville to say that Moses had died of “bad livin’” and that I needed to get the case before it was taken and sold to repay debts. Unfortunately, the case he had built was not the light-weight one I wanted for my small Celtic harp. But maybe if I had the case I could sell it and get my $600 back.

I wouldn’t have ordered such an expensive thing if my career as a singer/songwriter wasn’t picking up steam. Having made my first recording, I was getting airplay in college radio stations across the nation. It was time for a better instrument along with a flight case. I ordered the new harp. But Moses made very slow work of the case, despite my frequent and increasingly urgent long distance calls. Eventually he let slip the fact that he had subcontracted the work as soon as he had cashed my check for $600. I decided it was time to take a firmer stance with Moses.

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