This week just felt like last week, or was it the week before, he couldn’t remember, didn’t know. All he knew was that things weren’t good, that was what he knew for sure. He knew it with studious accuracy. It’s all the same for him now, everything is all the same. It is like an invisible sadistic giant has its thumb pressed hard against his skull, paralysing all attempted movements.
By Brenton Booth.
Mornings with the light at its best and evenings when it would do, she rolled back and forth on the horizon. The swivel of the telescope her husband left for her entertainment creaked in its housing and stuck when it turned. From its southwestern extreme the brass shaft took a nudge, a firm bump of her palm, to set the device back into motion northwest. She never strayed from that range, never turned the lens skyward to take in the stars or look back toward Europe or closer at hand across the blank slate of Greenland, that near-continent whose raw edge she occupied in her waiting.
Excerpt from Steve Himmer‘s novel Fram.
Another distraction. Another in-mind movie competing for attention with the thing that’s heart of focus for him now. He shoos it away. Holds finger to lips and attempts to becalm it to gag it to make it sod off. It doesn’t. They don’t, those white-coated fuckers. They stand there, not hearing nor heeding his outcries for silence, faces growing instead in consternation at the ink-marks that spool out on the seismograph page. Over their shoulders he peers, and can see same thing they do. The epicentre is far nearer than any of them dared think. The noise – the rumble, grumble, sonic jumble – it levitates, it rises, but sinks deeper at the selfsame time. The needle-scratch is barely audible beneath it. Still swinging his fists at all thoughts of mealtime, he has only his feet left free to try and trample this scientific worry with now. He does not need these distractions. He does not want these distractions.
By Dan Micklethwaite.
It’s true that I worked for them during the second purge. It’s not my intention to excuse what I’ve done, though God knows my crimes, if crimes is even the proper word, are far less grievous than those committed by others, the ones now called patriots. As for those maimed by our activities, they will have to speak, if they are still capable of speaking, for themselves. I’m responsible for my actions, and my actions alone. I’ve been promised immunity. But from what? And by whom?
By Nicholas Rombes
The young man abandoned what could but have been a watery soup and sidled, wriggling towards the lavatory – the frankly disgraceful state of which Mark wished away in favour of Miranda’s fingers playing music – “Miranda’s fingers,” Philip thought to distract himself from the inevitable flowing forth – and if he’d noticed the bespectacled gentleman’s entrance he did so withoutany sign of recognition. Upon the young man’s table sat a book that Mark strained himself to see. Endgame, it said. He made a memorandum to read Endgame, surmising that the raggedy fellow needed a decent conversation as much as he needed a good meal.
By Terry Andrew Craven.
And then you think you’ll write a poem to the soldiers, but you remember that you gave up poetry even before you gave up childhood, and besides the only poem a soldier knows is the poem of a bed offering sleep. And then you think, what is all this for anyway, the incandescence and phosphor light within, the unquenchable macabre inventory of entangling urgency, and you remember a woman dancing last night on the Rio Coco, drinking from the can and spitting every third gulp into the fire, like an offering to the god, the flames flaring up, her eyes nearly insensate with the pure joy of being alive.
By Peter Vilbig.
We sure were something then. Shuffle step kick turn smile turn shuffle shuffle step smile. Whenever they’d announce us, they’d say “double trouble” “two’s better than one” “the more the merrier.” Smile step shuffle shuffle turn smile step land smile. We travelled the country, the world, before we hit twenty. We lived more before anyone else had gotten around to it, so settling always seemed nice. I didn’t mind receding from the lights and the sounds and the crowds. I never belonged there, but I waited ’til my sister was good and ready to leave. She couldn’t have done it without me.
By Jaime Fountaine.
Some parties are forgettable, Alyssa says, how many parties have we had this week. She turns on the bathroom faucet but does not wash her hands or look down, staring at herself casually in the mirror, listening to the water. Her big lips crack as they smile. If you’ve been through hell, keep going, she says. Alyssa feels the edge of the sharp blade of her pocket knife with her thumb, and winces just before it breaks the skin, before she hears a knock on the door. She walks outside still holding the knife. She walks a straight line in one direction, because direction is consoling, softening her focus, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her other hand before descending downstairs. The person in the front of the line, waiting for the bathroom, a girl wearing a bikini, says, Winston Churchill. The girl in a bikini says, That girl walking away holding the knife is quoting Winston Churchill.
By Richard Chiem.
We walked towards Portobello Road. The Turkish Delight started to wear off by Ladbroke Grove. I realised that was the case when I tried to speak to Nick and felt my tongue tied. I was pretty drunk. I think he felt it wearing off too because he made a passing remark about how soon we would reach that pub down Portobello Road and look for Dennis Ahmed, this estate agent and pusher he knew, that would surely sort out some T.D. for us. It was sunny but there were dark clouds lingering above. It was clear it was going to rain. It was just a matter of time.
By Fernando Sdrigotti.
He squinted his eyes at the stage in the glare of the lights, as if he were searching for something. For some reason it made Dan think of The Clash’s Rude Boy, the moment where Ray Gange seems to have an epiphany while the Clash plays ‘Police and Thieves’. Dan used to try and collect gig epiphanies as if piecing them together could form some sort of grand idea and would guide him through life. When he first watched the film he felt an affinity with the wannabe roadie. Now if he were to watch Rude Boy, he’d want to smack Ray and tell him to get up, get a job, get a life, do something. That’s when Dan had the sad realisation that not everyone can grow up to be an astronaut or rockstar.
By Allie Moh.
Death of A Ladies' Man by Christiana Spens
Grey Cats by Adam Biles
Body Parts by Dylan Trigg
Par Avion Vol.1
On Snakes & Other Stories by Yrsa Daley-Ward
Varroa Destructor by Lee Rourke
The Edgier Waters: 5 Years of 3:AM Magazine
3:AM London, New York, Paris
