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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.