Fiction

I first met M.V. at the anniversary party of a mutual friend in one of the evil suburbs of Northern Virginia seven years ago. I was taking in the slanted rays of a sunset on the patio after a conversation with a man who made his living selling the unthinkable when she stepped outside to do likewise. Our ties to the man who invited us were weak enough that it took no time at all for the one between us to supersede him in importance. In only a few minutes we discovered shared interests in the cluster of red cedars lining the backyard, the writings of David Kilcullen, and the typologies of man that walk the streets of our nation’s capital. We both knew ourselves to be wastrels beneath contempt in a way nobody else in the room could imagine.

A short story by Nathan Jefferson.

Abundancy isn’t a prerequisite to being a family; no, family can be a single thing, alone and even small, provided that that lone even small thing is comfortable and happy by itself just being, but I don’t think any of us would have been and that was good and great because there were a lot of us making up ours; lots of types of us too, those being, in order of most to least common, Oak, Beech, Corsican Pine, Scots Pine, Fur, Holly, Birch, Alder, Larch, Spruce, Lime, Horse Chestnut, Sweet Chestnut, Ginkgo, and Californian Redwood—though the last were just two, standing like pillars on the outskirts of opposite sides of the grove to each other, middle trunks hidden in the upper foliage of much smaller trees but the rest of them impossible to hide so tall and thick and red were they, like the nose of an au naturel clown. We were a family through proximity but also friendliness, when you can’t move from one spot and when your arms move only from particularly strong winds or the clambering of particularly nimble visitors and when your bark is hard but what lies below is so soft it’s just crying out for love and affection, friendliness becomes a main part of your personality…

A short story by William Hayward.

Archimedes and I are in the bath as all great thinkers are. His body is grey and wrinkled in a way you only see with people who have been sat in the bath for two thousand two hundred and sixty-nine years. The fool is stuck in eternal Eureka with his balls hanging loose. They are extremely dangly. It is kind of obscene. It’s gravity, Archimedes says, when he sees me looking. Chin out, dirt-grey beard flung over his shoulder, prideful like he’s invented the term.

A short story by Hana White.

The circular room is six metres in diameter, although she thinks it used to be seven, eight, nine metres, but it’s smaller now. Six doors, equally spaced, numbered: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Plain pine panels, simple handles, and when she first arrived she tried them all. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But they were all locked and, although several months, maybe even years, have passed, she assumes they’re still locked. She wonders whether she should try them again. She imagines doing this, imagines turning the handles, and although of course they’ll still be locked, there’s some chance, perhaps, that one or several of them might open. She imagines doing this, but doesn’t, and doesn’t think she can. This growing chasm between what might be done and what is done. Just because you can, she thinks, doesn’t mean you should or could, or will.

A short story by Stephen Orr.

In the morning, sore and coffeeless, the light pale and cold, Theresa got us lost on the way back to her car and we found ourselves in an area that didn’t seem park-like at all, but rather hostile, alien, the landscape erupting in sharp, slate outcroppings like the scales of some enormous buried dragon.
We got so turned around, do you remember?
It was like it always is when you’re lost, a bit funny at first—the camaraderie of it all—and then not so funny.

By Nicholas Rombes.

and what is a queue for the pumps—flashy, pattern motos with missing handle-grips, side-panels scratched, in colors that don’t match, loose exhausts bobbing and ticking in the heat—clogs the gas station and spills out down the road—more pothole than road—of plastic bottles crushed into black mud, hard-packed under more plastic, more mud, more plastic, more mud, more plastic—autumn leaves on a forest floor, only autumn never comes down this far: it’s every rainfall, every flash flood—the fresh forest soil long ago swept away, this is the pungency of stagnant sewage-infused black mud on which women sell coal, closed bananas, breadfruit, kowosol, watermelon and lettuce leaves…

A short story by Roy Duffield.

At the Holiday Inn café, having not had breakfast, he ordered steak and fries for a late lunch. It was difficult to cut the meat into bite-sized pieces with a knife, and even with the addition of salt and pepper it was flavourless and could not be fully chewed up. He poured it down his throat with the wine. It was like eating the sole of a leather shoe. Indeed, the leather soles of his wingtip shoes had been damaged by moisture. The rain never stopped falling. He was trapped by fickle weather. The droplets trickled down outside the window. The last sip of wine flowed into his stomach. The only meal of the day he had during his hotel stay. Monotonous routine like the very pulp fiction he was tired of reading.

A short story by hiromi suzuki.

Here in Norwich the Plague has passed yet Grace says many are still unwell. This may be due to their children. They name them William and Richard and Alice and Agnes. Grace tells me the parents say to each child every night sleep well and the children sleep well but the parents are not well as far as she can tell. And me?

When I was but a girl the Plague caught me and would not let go.

My parents bless them fed me broth. They tried watermelon and kale and activated charcoal as well but alas the Plague bubbled and boiled in me and would not let go. Then my parents bless them lost all hope and laid my broken body on the wagon that takes away the unwell to rest forever in a dark distant crypt. Farewell they cried farewell.

A short story by D.J. Huppatz.

I was one with the cold / Moscow imparted, an import
from the old Soviet days / A mixture of mud & snow
on my western-brand boots, / as deep as my animus
after all these human years / loneliness inexpressible
since we left without him…

A short story by Stella Fridman Hayes.

I would like a moustache, so I decided to perform a citizen’s arrest on the newly-appointed Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Like me, the newly-appointed Secretary of State for Business and Trade did not sleep altogether soundly. Sleeping was not one of his core skills, meaning he often went for long ruminative walks along the river at night, streets all slippery and bare, reduced threat of assassination/name-calling. I read about this on the Global Network of Interconnected Computers, Servers and Smart Appliances (also known as the Internet), the Secretary of State for Business and Trade’s sub-prime sleeping habits.

A short story by Niall Kaye.

About a month ago, my father’s aunt Sylvia told me about our way-back-when ancestor who was supposedly displaced Russian royalty. Old Vlad was shy around cattle and preachers and liked to drunkenly poeticize about the Fatherland. I couldn’t remember a time when Sylvia didn’t have a rattling glass of vodka in her hand, and when she told me that story she leaned in close, her breath reeking, and said, “That’s why I am the way I am. You can’t stop blood, can you, Muriel?”

A short story by Alicia Bones.

Call comes in on the phone. Now just what is this, Buck thinks. Who the hell could that be, Buck thinks. Ain’t took a call in years, he says. Room got real still after that, like the room was listening to Buck. Room ain’t heard Buck speak in years, room thinks.

A short story by Matthew Dix.