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Minute 9: Blade Runner

Torrential rain and flickering neon, pedestrians of miscellaneous ethnicities bump umbrellas, struggle through tight alleyways between a downmarket electronics store and a line of crowded street-food stalls. Seated at the counter of a sushi bar, close-up on his face and open shoulders, an unnamed man in a noir-style classic trench coat rubs the splinters off his chopsticks. Behind his right shoulder appears a uniformed torso with a police badge pinned to a bulky stab-vest. The cop has a deep bass voice…

By Des Barry.

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The Saga of William Soskill

On the first day of the first month one year after his parents bought him his first bicycle William Soskill a boy of below average intelligence had his skull fractured when a one-eyed bald eagle dropped onto his head a one-legged pit bull it had abducted from a junkyard in Brooklyn.

A short story by David Sheskin.

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Heil Bukowski!: The Nazi Letters That Never Were

As luck would have it, I came across a relatively tiny database with a large number of Los Angeles Examiner and Los Angeles Herald Examiner issues. A perfunctory search yielded no results at all. I remembered that Bukowski’s father was mad at him for signing his piece as “Henry Bukowski” in a 1940 Los Angeles Collegian issue, his first known publication ever. I tried several variations of the Bukowski name and, lo and behold, there they were, three letters by a “Henry C. Bukowski, Jr.” I clicked on them and sure enough those were the elusive letters Bukowski had mentioned in interviews and poems, lying dormant for God knows how long in that small database no one had ever heard of.

By Abel Debritto.

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Instructions for Shooting

close-up: of hand over hand, tentative, a brief squeeze, one of them disengages as the camera pans up to find two people crying, we can tell from her expression it’s the first time she’s ever seen tears on his face but not the first time he’s brought them to hers…

A short story by JP Seabright.

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It’s All About Love

You see, before I met Charlie, I lived in a world I didn’t understand or trust. I still don’t, in fairness, but back then I really didn’t see the point of anything. The bad thing—that happened when I was a kid—influenced this to a certain extent, but it would be remiss of me to attribute all my shortcomings to that moment. No, my perception of the world was shaped over many, many years. Don’t worry: I’ll spare you the details of what molded my personality. Just be assured that those experiences left me feeling very disillusioned with life. It was all aspects of life too, not one thing in particular; not the big or the small, or the irrelevant, but everything. Everything just seemed so empty and stupid and pointless.

A short story by Christopher Farrington.

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Les Story

Les was fat with crooked eyes and messed-up teeth. And he told me he’d died at age twelve. Died in a bike accident, revived, died again, and revived once more at the hospital. He was grown, but the trauma from the accident made it so I had to drive. “Take me to Waffle House,” he’d say. “Four more jobs before we go home.” He tried to monitor my every move too. Like when I took a call or got lunch. And he hated everyone: Black people, runners, bikers, fast-food workers, women.

A short story by Charles Mines.

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Memory, Sleep & Getting Started

Each of us must remember or is forced to forget parts of our existence. Mine is a reflection on this self- defence or improving/way out mechanism guided by our neuronal connections. A way of survive switching that internal and consequentially our external links and relationships. A continuous way of changing and developing our lives.

New Poetry by Dario Roberto Dioli.

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Furniture

He liked to show me things and he liked me because I behaved like I liked to be shown things. Because I behaved like I liked to be shown things he showed me more things, he showed me the town and he showed me the coast and he showed me the cycle route worth cycling. And then he told me about the tides and the wind and I said Ugh the wind and he said That’s how it is and I said: Yeah. Later on he showed me his house and he showed me what he’d done to his house and while he was showing me his house he told me how he’d acquired the house and how he’d worked on it and how in working on it he’d saved it, yes he’d saved his house, did he want to do the same to me. I don’t mean to give the impression that this was a thought I had at the time, it was not a thought I had at the time and in fact it did not occur to me until I started wanting to smash things after seeing him. In his house there were many things to show me, that was the way. By the way that was always the way.

A short story by Emilia Ong.

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george-berger-brixton

Orpington to London Victoria #12 – George Berger Column

I’ve felt pride and shame, and also felt incredibly small when considering how many other people could — and should — write completely different stories with the same chapter titles. All those commuters, all those adventurers, all those rebels who burned brightly like Kerouac’s roman candles. The mad ones, the sane ones, the unhappy ones and the ones whose joy and purpose lit a flame that we all may see a little more clearly. The heroes and the villains. All with their own private stories, unrealised memoirs, crammed into those suburban cattle trucks as they rushed through the suburbs with varying degrees of purpose.

George Berger reaches the end of the line.

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Strangely, Disturbingly, and Disgustingly Human

His head has been cropped out of the frame but we can see his skinny torso, the scar tissue from self-inflicted wounds on his chest, his tiny nipples, and his left arm with jutting veins. He wears a short black skirt hitched above a new and disturbing zone of an impossible erogeny, of supernumerary body parts, of polymelia and polyorchidism. This is the surface of Carter’s challenging and pathological eroticism and yet it is a construction of zones that produce an energy of depravity and disgust.

Steve Finbow reviews The Practitioner by Michael Carter.

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Automatism

My father was a good man, yes, he was a good man, certainly he was good, everyone could see he was good, thus a good man, but this is what happens to good men, so I’ve been told, yes, good men, it’s always what’s happening to them, it’s that good men, they always leave. No, sir, thank you, I’m okay, I’m okay here in my bathing suit barely covering my nethers, I’m quite alright out here on the beach, you can keep moving, you and your wife who I adore, please keep moving so I can watch out for the good man. I’m okay, I promise everything is alright, I say to my interlocutor as he passes. I must find Virgil, he will know what to do, he will know about good men, about finding them, he will know, I hope he will know about good men and finding them.

A short story by J. Billings.

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