by Alison Bullock

“If my severed hand were to wash up on shore, would you recognize it?” I asked. A simple question. We were sitting under my beach house portico, sipping martinis, and watching the tide roll in.

For the record, I would have recognized his severed hand any day of the week. His olive-toned skin, that white thread of a scar that swims across his thumb like a tapeworm.  Even if that hand brined in seawater for weeks– even after bacterial bloating set in, or crabs got involved, I’d still recognize it anywhere.

“Forget it,” I told him. “Your silence is my answer.”

“Why would that even happen?” He sputtered. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a toddler. I have to explain everything to him.

We’re so different– he and I, and it all comes back to hands.  His pinkie finger is bent, which means that he’s lacking in communication skills, whereas mine is a ramrod. The gap between his thumb and index finger is wide, indicating a person who tends to avoid serious discussions, whereas my thumb and index finger are practically fused– almost identical to the paw of an Australian marsupial.

We are polar opposites you see; two lonely circles floating side by side, but never intersecting.  A Venn Diagram that doesn’t Venn. If these were our only differences, it might be a gap worth bridging, but there’s more.

His nail beds are square, confirming that he’s more of a same-old, same-old type, whereas my nails are shovel-shaped, proving that I favor ingenuity. He’s always coffee black– no sugar, whereas you never know whether I’ll go macchiato, affogato, or lungo.

When I explained all of this to him–how it was a hopeless situation because of our hands, he tried to talk me out of it.

“But I love you,” he whinged. “What about the baby?”

He didn’t understand the pointlessness of his pleading. See, my ring and middle phalanges are far apart, which means I’m impossible to influence.

                                                  *   *   *

Alison Bullock’s short fiction has appeared, or is soon to appear, in Peatsmoke, The Coachella Review, The Writing Disorder, Halfway Down the Stairs, Anti-Heroin Chic, Boston Literary Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and the Momaya Annual Review. She lives in Massachusetts.

 

 

by Steven Ostrowski    

A sleeting morning and a shock to the system since it was only mid-September. Connor didn’t want to be there, but Tammy insisted that it was the decent thing to do. Of course, she was right, even though they weren’t that close with Jennifer, who was Tammy’s cousin, and even less close with Jack, Jennifer’s police officer husband who’d shot himself in the head two weeks earlier.

Connor pressed the doorbell. He didn’t hear it ring, thought he hadn’t pushed it hard enough, and pushed it a second time. Tammy shook her head at him as if he’d kicked the damn door. When it opened, Jennifer stood in the doorway looking sleepless and hunched, her blue eyes shrunken and grayed with sorrow. 

“Hi,” she said. “Come in.” 

As soon as they were in the foyer, Tammy offered Jennifer the bouquet of mixed flowers they’d brought.

“They’re beautiful,” Jennifer said in a quavering voice. She led the couple into the living room, gestured for them to sit. Jennifer went into the dining room and lay the bouquet on the table. “I’ll put these in a vase these later.”

“No, of course,” Tammy said. 

“Please sit,” Jennifer said.

Tammy sat down on the mauve sofa, then Connor did. Jennifer remained standing, blinking her eyes as if she were trying to remember what she was supposed to do next. “Can I get you a drink? Coffee?” 

Too quickly, Connor said, “Nothing for me.” It sounded, somehow, rude. “Thanks, though.”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Tammy said. “We just came to tell you how sorry we are, and…and to let you know that we’re here for you if there’s anything we can do.”

Jennifer caressed her left earlobe with two fingers. She wasn’t wearing earrings. She lowered herself into a rocking chair that faced the sofa. “Jack always insisted, ever since he became a cop, that when he died there wasn’t going to be any wake or funeral. Nothing. Imagine? You know what cops’ funerals are like. Everyone wanted some way to mourn together, but I couldn’t dishonor his wish. Right?” She looked only at Tammy the whole time she’d spoken.

“No. You have to honor a person’s…”

“I don’t know why he… He wasn’t really unhappy. There wasn’t anything going on, like he wasn’t being investigated anymore. All that was settled. It’s a stressful job, but, you know, this town isn’t really violent or dangerous. I don’t understand why…”

Connor nodded sympathetically, but he was thinking about the first time he’d been introduced to Jack, by Tammy, before Jack and Tammy were married. She’d introduced Jack as a police officer and Connor as a professor and poet. “With two published books already,” she’d said with naive pride. What Connor never forgot in all the years since was that Jack actually laughed out loud. After that, whenever they saw each other, which wasn’t often, Jack always had to announce Connor’s presence with “Hey, the poet’s here. Recite us a poem, Con. Make us feel something.”

“But even in this town,” Tammy said, “with the job a cop has, they must deal with things that they don’t want to talk about.”

“He hated talking about work.”

Tammy glanced around, said, “The kids go back home?”

“Yeah. We had the cremation, just the three of us. Took his ashes to the beach. You know. They had families and jobs to get back to.” Jennifer fingered the delicate silver crucifix that hung around her neck. “He didn’t leave a note, nothing. He just came home from work that day and gave me a kiss on the cheek like always. A little while later he went out behind the storage shed, and…and…” She fought not to cry, but the tears came anyway.

Tammy got up. She knelt beside her cousin and put one arm around her shoulder and with the other hand rubbed her back. “Oh, Jen. This is so hard, I know.”

Connor stared at an ink stain on his pointer finger. He’d always envied the way women knew instinctively how to console one another. He wished men, or more men, or at least he himself, had that gift.

Jennifer suddenly lifted her eyes and locked them on Connor with an intensity that chilled him. “I don’t meant anything bad by this, Connor, but…”

Tammy turned and both women stared at him.

“I think he resented that you weren’t more accepting of him. Of, you know, his blue-collar occupation, his regular guy-ness. I think he thought you looked down on him. From the ‘ivory tower.’” 

Connor shook his head and stammered, “No, I…”

“He told me he sent you some of his poems a few years ago, but you never responded.”

Tammy said, “He wrote poetry?”

“He just wanted something, some little response from you, Connor. A suggestion or two. I don’t know if he was any good; he would never show me what he wrote. He always said, let me get better at it, then I’ll show you. He knew you were a busy guy, but still… You couldn’t say anything?”

                                                                         *

 

They drove. “You never answered him?” 

Jack had sent Connor an envelope, snail mail, with three handwritten poems on three sheets of loose-leaf. His note said, Hey, are these any good, dude? Three maudlin, sentimental poems that rhymed, all of them about how cruel the world was. Bad, sad. Sorrow, tomorrow. Connor had put them aside, meaning to offer Jack some generic but honest response, something about how heartfelt and sincere the poems were. And to keep revising.

“Look, Tam, they were awful. But I did mean to tell him, you know, to keep at it. Then I got busy and forgot all about them. It happens. I’m feel terrible about it now, obviously.” 

They drove on, Tammy staring out, Connor harboring the absurd hope that his wife would suddenly understand and offer him consolation: It’s not your fault. He had to be depressed. There was probably more to that investigation than we know. Something.

                                                              *   *   *

Steven Ostrowski is a widely-published fiction writer, poet and painter. His flash fiction has been published in numerous places, including Arts & Letters, Midway Review, and American Short Fiction. His poetry manuscript, “Persons of Interest,” won the 2020 Wolfson Chapbook Prize and will be published by Wolfson Press in 2022. He teaches at Central Connecticut State University. 

by Ilari Pass

The woman, not her desire, is like the spider  

when she takes unto herself a frail house.

If only her lover knew, she’ll wait for the moon 

to pry open the night, her web will flash 

silver sparkles, an allurement to destruction

between lines of white she writes 

toward the silence.

                                                           *   *   *

When Ilari isn’t writing poetry or stories, she recites Ayahs (verses) from the Quran; travels with her family; plays hide-and-go-seek, blows bubbles, and catches fireflies with her 4-year-old grandson. Nominated twice for the 2021 Best of the Net Anthology and other accolades, you can find her work in Pithead Chapel, Door is A Jar, The Write Launch, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, and others.

by CC Carter 

Gustavus Montaigne Schmidt, aka Smitty, was not only on the run, but literally running. Running from a small time mobster and collector known as Break-bone Bob. As he intersected 42^nd  Street doing the full tilt boogie, he skidded and almost fell. Cart wheeling his arms for balance, barely keeping upright, he inadvertently hailed a passing cab. 

A woman, stepping into the rain from an unseen doorway and carrying several upscale shopping bags, was flagging the same cab. She considered it her hail; he, his.

“Share?” he asked, reaching the door first, looking past her at the approaching mobster who was just then rounding the corner. 

She turned to follow his gaze and her face went pale. 

“Yes, fine, please hurry.” 

They both scrambled in and the driver queried direction in the rearview mirror with one raised eyebrow. 

“Downtown,” said Smitty. 

“Uptown,” said the lady.

“Uptown it is,” answered the driver, calculating the greater tip with barely a glance. Smitty and the lady were both looking backward; his pursuer had also found a cab. 

“Step on it,” they said together. 

What gives, thought Schmidt. Does she know Bob? What’re the odds? He looked sideways at his fellow passenger, who was also following the progress of the pursuing taxi. Late twenties, buxom, leggy, a smear of strawberry lip, a freshly swollen black eye beneath a black beret festooned with lace. Her skirt-jacket combo would have paid Smitty’s bar tab for a month. Smitty noticed things. The driver’s I.D. number was zero, zero, twenty-six. 

Turning onto 53^rd, they suddenly met with stopped traffic, two hundred red taillights blurred by rain.

 “Here, take this,” said the lady to the cabbie, handing him a fifty. She disembarked in a hurry, taking all of her bags but one. Smitty grabbed the remaining bag, and slid out the other door, thinking he might catch her, but she’d already disappeared. 

He pulled his coat up over his head and jogged the two blocks to the subway. A train was loading and he hurried in, the last one through the door. Dripping, shivering, making sure he was unobserved, he glanced into the bag and smiled. He could read the wrappers on some of the bundles, fresh twenties, $20K per bundle, a minimum of ten bundles. He bought a transfer to the airport.

In Nevada, Smitty walked into the first casino on the strip and cashed in one bundle for chips, feeling the juice, knowing he was on a roll. He’d always liked roulette and put 

$5K down on number twenty-six.

It hit, paying thirty five to one. A small crowd gathered. 

After only a beat, Smitty said, “Let it ride,” and held his breath. The pit boss nodded to the croupier. The ball rolled, popped, landed in the slot, spun to a stop. Twenty-six again. 

The crowd whistled and clapped. As Smitty exhaled, he noticed a tattoo on the dealer’s wrist. The symbol of Infiniti. In black. 

“Black eight,” said Schmidt. The dealer spun the wheel.

*   *   *

CC Carter is a poet, a writer of short fiction, and a Singer-Songwriter.

His music can be heard at cccartermusic.com or at Ouroborosartists.com

He lives in Bradenton, Florida.

by William Kitcher

Annemarie was driving; I was in the passenger seat. We turned onto Station St., and came up behind a rollerblader who was in the middle of our lane, weaving from side to side, sucking on a soda pop, oblivious to everything due to listening to something on headphones.

“Ah jeez,” I said. “We’re going to be late as it is. And now this.”

“We’re not going to be late,” said Annemarie.

I looked at the dashboard clock. “It’s five to eight. The play starts at eight.”

“Plays never start on time.”

“That’s true but it’s still about ten minutes to the theatre, and then we have to find parking.”

“You’re always worrying about nothing.”

“I wouldn’t have to worry if you didn’t take so long to get ready. I mean, putting make-up on. One, we’re going to be sitting in a dark theatre so no one will even see you. And two, you don’t need make-up. You’re beautiful as it is.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“I’m not. You are.”

“No, I’m not beautiful.”

“Then why does every guy you meet hit on you?”

“It’s my personality.”

There was no rational response to that so I didn’t bother to try. We’d been going out only about three months so I couldn’t get into anything really personal. But my mouth didn’t listen to my brain.

“You’ve done stuff like this before,” I said. “We got into that movie last week late because of you, and I never could figure out what was going on. And, like going on vacation and not taking a suitcase you could lock. That’s why all your stuff was ripped off. How could you not think of that?”

“I’m more trusting of people than you are.”

“And look where it got you.”

I could see Annemarie clenching her jaw, gripping the steering wheel harder, and staring ahead.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, looking at the rollerblader still dawdling in front of us. I reached over and hit the horn. The rollerblader visibly jumped, stopped, turned around, removed her headphones, and glared at us.

Annemarie slammed the brakes on and turned to me. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“She’s on the road! She’s not only stopping us from getting where we want to go, she could get herself killed, especially with those headphones on!”

“You’re unbelievable,” said Annemarie. “Live and let live. She’s not hurting anyone.”

“She’s being stupid!”

“You’re being stupid.” She paused, and then said, “You need a haircut.”

I could feel any relationship we had fading away…

The rollerblader came back to the car and went to the driver’s side.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Annemarie.

Annemarie put her window down, plastered a smile on her face, leaned toward the window, and said, apologetically, “Look—”

The rollerblader threw her drink in Annemarie’s face, muttered something, then rolled off. Annemarie’s mascara ran.

I handed some tissues to her, and said, “Now we’re really going to be late.”

                                                    *   *   *

Bill’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published and/or produced in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Holland, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S. Recent stories were published in Slippage Lit, Alien Station, 365 Tomorrows, Theme of Absence, Yellow Mama, 34 Orchard, Revolute, Great Ape, Jokes Review, and Across The Margin, and he has stories forthcoming in Black Petals, The Literatus, Schlock!, Inklette, Literally Stories, Sledgehammer, Antipodean SF, Bewildering Stories, The Bookends Review, Defenestration, Spank The Carp, Evening Street Review, and 2 stories in the Horrified Press anthology, “Twisted Time.“

by Paul Germano

Roy Samanski loosens his necktie, pours himself a Bourbon on the rocks and downs it so quick the ice never gets the chance to melt. He’s got one year, seven months and eleven days to go, before his eligibility kicks in for full Social Security retirement benefits and he has no intentions of applying early and collecting less. He’s put in the years and he wants every cent he’s entitled to. 

Roy used to practice the gentlemanly habit of nursing his Bourbon, savoring the flavor as it chills over ice, taking slow, almost erotic sips of the dark brew. But not anymore, not after day-in and day-out with the asshats he works with, one more stupid than the next. He pours himself another glass and downs it in a New York minute.

His wife walks in, surprised to see him. “Didn’t hear you come in, how long have you been home?” He grunts an answer and refills his glass; the ice cubes are still solid. She watches him gulp down his drink and raises a disapproving eyebrow. “Rough day?” she asks, already knowing the answer. He sours his face. 

“I didn’t have much fun at work today either,” she says in a sympathetic voice. He offers to pour her a glass. “No thanks, got the tea kettle on the stove.” She twists her lips. “You can always opt for early Social Security. At this point, it’s not going to make much difference moneywise.” He grunts, pours another drink, downs it quick and stifles a burp. In the distance, the tea kettle whistles. She pats his shoulder and leaves the room.

Roy pours more Bourbon, draining the bottle dry. “Goddammit,” he grunts, glaring at the empty bottle. He downs his drink in a hurry and starts chewing on the ice.

                                              *   *   *

Paul Germano lives in Syracuse, smack dab in the center of New York State. His fiction has been published in roughly 40 print and online magazines including Boston Literary Magazine, The Drabble, Flash in a Flash, Foliate Oak, Free Flash Fiction and Microfiction Monday Magazine.

 

by Russell Richardson

His reconstructed face is a scientific wonder, but a corrugated fright in the mirror.

Ray interacts only with his medical team and, reluctantly, his online support group. Gayle, an Irish woman from the group, is sweet, but he recoils from her DM requests to turn on his video. She is not self-conscious about her own patchwork visage.

Ray has everything delivered. Outside his apartment door come groceries, Amazon boxes. He breakfasts at his window, watching pedestrians below. In her gentle slur, Gayle recommends timed excursions outside—sit on a bench for five minutes among the living.

Ray dons an invisible man outfit and paces the hallways first. Next day, he sits on the courtyard bench. A young couple pass, obliviously in love with themselves. A mother pushing a stroller averts her gaze. Having survived, Ray resets his timer for another five before retreating.

Ray texts Gayle the news. She calls immediately. He debates answering. “I’m so proud!” she squeals. They talk for an hour. The next day, they chat for another hour. He calculates their time difference while washing dishes. The third night, they talk until she falls asleep. Drifting off, she threatens to visit.

He confides in a nurse, “I have a girlfriend.”

She asks, “Has she seen you yet?”

His confidence plummets. A blind date with a blind girl would be simpler.

The pressure to show his face is suffocating. Ray skips the following support group, and Gayle sends a worried text. They talk again on the phone. One day, she sends a picture of a booking confirmation screen. He nearly dies——and cries.

During the next group, she DMs: “I’d be so happy to see your face.”

He inhales. His mouse hovers between the browser’s red X and the video icon. He clicks.

He sees himself smile.

                                       *    *    *

Russell Richardson has written and published many short stories, illustrated a book of poetry, and created children’s books to benefit kids with cancer. His YA novel, Level Up and Die! was published in April, 2021. He lives with his wife and sons in Binghamton, NY, the carousel capital of the world.

by M.L. Owen

Lydia peels celery before she eats it. That’s how I noticed her in the first place. It was at the parents-day pot-luck the week before school started. She sat under the elm tree, the one away from the street, the one that doesn’t have a swing. She sat there with a full plate of food, peeling the celery and laying the strings in a little pile.

She saw me staring at her. “I don’t like to floss my teeth while I’m still eating,” she said.

“I’m David,” I said.

Other people say that she has really big glasses, but I know that she has to have big glasses because she had such huge eyes. They take in everything. I went over and sat down beside her, near her. I didn’t ask her permission or anything. I just did it. While I did it, her eyes followed me. Her huge eyes. It wasn’t like she seemed frightened or angry or even especially curious. She just watched me and peeled celery.

I stuck my hand in the applesauce on my plate. I realized then that I’d been staring at her, too. She didn’t seem surprised at what I’d done but reached over and handed me a napkin. Maybe people always stare at her so much that they stick their hands in their food, or run into walls, step off cliffs. She must be used to it. I stopped staring for a while, and we ate.

We finished our plates at more or less the same time. It’s hard to tell exactly when a person’s done eating, but both of us wiped our mouths and laid the napkins on top of the plates. I picked up both of the plates and stood up. She reached up and touched me on the arm. That’s all. She just touched me. Then she picked up the little pile of celery strings and put them on top of the napkin. “I’m Lydia,” she said.

Together we walked to the nearest trash barrel, dropped the plates, and just kept on walking out toward the apple orchard. Sometime after that I took her hand, or she took mine. Sometime after that, we started talking. I don’t remember how we got to talking or what we talked about. We must have talked about her moving to Atacra, about being in the same grade, about her dad dying, and her mom having grown up here. I got to know whose things somehow. I know we talked about me, too, but I don’t remember what I told her. We just talked.

It must have been about an hour before we got back to the picnic. Bill and Ed yelled at me to grab my glove for the softball game, and her mother called to her. She stared at me again with those huge eyes and then squeezed my hand before letting go and running away.

I’ve never known anyone who peeled her celery.

                                               *    *    *

M. L. Owen lives and writes among the giant redwoods of Northern California and has published in a number of literary journals, including Down in the Dirt, The Bookends Review, Toyon, Mosaic (10th St. Press), Poets & Writers (College of the Redwoods), Gambit, and Scribblement.