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Titty

3/27/2016

BY ROBERT MORGAN FISHER

The man tapped my shoulder. I turned around. It was night, in an alley. His features were blurred, blue-green, indistinct. He may have had a beard or mustache. I don’t know.

“I got a bad case of the titty-shits!” he snarled.

“The what?!”

“TITTY-SHITS! Got ‘em BAD!”

I paused—that was my downfall. He punched me in the nose. I was stunned. He found my wallet and fled. I dropped to my knees.

The police came. I told them what happened. More or less. When it got to the part about what he’d said, I couldn’t get it out.

“He said what?” the woman cop looked up from her notepad.

“‘Titty...’” I couldn’t say the whole thing for some reason. It seemed so stupid and silly. Made me feel foolish.

The Most Interesting Person at Work

3/20/2016

BY JAKE TEENY

In order to reach my desk at the back of the office, I have to pass everyone else’s half-walled cubicle on the fifth floor of my building first. “Hello, Deborah. Hello, Mary. Hello, Marshall.” Marshall tries to hide the fact that he’s balding by always being excited when he sees you. Like, for that one instant, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more enjoyable than talking to you and giving you a high-five. Always the high-five. In my opinion, that ritualistic Neanderthal greeting is just another attempt to distract you from the glare reflecting from the ball of his head.

It doesn’t.

“Hello, Harry. Hello, Frank. Hello, Suzanne.” Not Suz-in, like your husbands are inside me when you’re at work or staying with your sick mother. But Suz-anne, like I’m an expert on processing male thoughts of fidelity through the chasm between my breasts, inviting them to stare, to guess, to undress, to watch me bend and pinch my shoulder blades as I retrieve an accidentally fallen pencil.

I hate her.

The Bequest

3/13/2016

BY MICHAEL C. KEITH

"You can tell a lot about a person from his underwear." –– Rachel Bilson

*

When a lifelong friend of mine died, his mother thought to give me some of what she called his “good” clothes. When I resisted her offer, she protested, saying that it was ridiculous to let them go to waste since they were practically brand new and Brandon and I were about the same size. The idea still didn’t sit well with me. It seemed kind of creepy, but I realized it was a gesture of kindness on her part, because I’d been a close pal of her son since we’d both been in elementary school.

A week after Brandon’s funeral, Mrs. Gibson called and told me to come by her house because she had a large box of his things that she was sure I could use. I told her I’d be by when I could, but I planned to avoid doing so for as long as possible, hoping she would lose track and forget about it. It wasn’t until my girlfriend, Hannah, got on my case that I made plans to pick up the stuff.

“Okay, but I’m going to give it to Goodwill as soon as I can,” I grumbled.

“That’s fine with me, because I sure don’t want you walking around with Brandon’s clothes on. Yuk! That would be just too spooky.”

Helix

3/6/2016

BY BASILIKE PAPPA

When I took the place over, she was gone. She was the old creature that moved about the house and the garden in small steps, taking care of them. She never took care of me. She hated me; my blossomless heart; my art. She called it noxious, and destroyed it devotedly. She wouldn't let me near her favorites. Whenever she saw me, she would mutter something like a prayer, or exorcism. She’d pull me out of my hiding places, and throw me out.

I kept coming back. My roots here went deeper than she imagined.

I was wild – nothing like Rose, Daisy, Violet, or Lily. She was loving and tender with them. Bringing them cool water on hot summer days; covering them in their beds in frosty winter nights; whispering secrets to them. She was proud of them, as if they were her natural offspring. And I had to shrink in the shadows and writhe, green with envy, as I watched their strength and beauty grow.

She was found dead in the garden, among her favorites. They didn’t shed a tear. Only Willow wept, but then she was always weeping.

My time had come.

Titty

The Most Interesting Person at Work

The Bequest

Helix

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