Cort was asleep when the car crashed into the side of his building. He’d lost his job only a week and a half earlier, and had taken to sleeping until the early afternoon. In the summer heat he’d started sleeping on the screened-in porch.
All in Fiction
“Again.” I waited for his response, anticipating a sigh.
“Again?” John checked his mirrors and signaled his emergency lights, but no sigh. There’s a plus.
“Oh, yes, again. Pull over,” I muttered, reaching for the paper towels. As I looked away, I felt his stare penetrating me. Too commanding, too bossy, too everything, once again. I knew.
The whole thing was rotten. A wet heap that piled in and on itself, leaving white flecks of paper hanging in the water like a snow globe.
He sighed.
“It’s all that extra ply,” he said. He tried to sound confident.
In the very center of the grassy commons stands a regal statue of Thaddeus Wallace. One hand grasps a weighty tome while the other thumbs a jacket lapel. Wallace University’s founder faces the administration building and oversees the comings and goings of all students, but his bronzed eyes aren’t the only pair watching. Waiting. Looking.
The mall is perverse. It’s a haven to me. Teenage girls look at teal thongs. Young guys with too much cologne offer to massage my hands. I sneak a Cinnabon when I’m supposed to be on a diet. I always see a father at the mall, secretly wishing his toddler would grow up and leave the house. I feel safe. Everything hidden is predictable.
Walter Bumpus was forty-three days shy of his eighty-first birthday when his calendar finally ran out. His last words were less than poetic.
“Not too shabby,” he said, placing his empty dish on the counter. “I think I’ll have that again for dinner. Leave it out and I’ll fix another plate when I get hungry,” he told wife number three, as he shuffled across the linoleum floor stabbing the tile with his cane for traction and stability.
I watched it all. I looked up and saw the whole thing and I didn’t move because I thought it wasn’t real. It just didn’t look real. I watched as one of them fell and when the first cloud of smoke and dust flooded the street, I jerked awake and got inside my truck. But all the soot and ash were too fast and some got inside and I looked outside the window and all I could see was gray. My eyes started stinging and I couldn’t keep them open and I wanted to get out and run, I didn’t want to stay, but I couldn’t leave so I sat there breathing in the remains of the city. Then I heard a boom and the next one fell.
FICTIONSmoke RingsKeith Buie
The cabinets clash with the countertops. Matching mahogany-stained floorboards and cupboards accentuate black granite countertops and backsplash tiles. The intention: a dark, bold appearance. The result: the kitchen looks like a giant Hershey bar.
FICTIONUncomfortable AdventuresNathan Tompkins
Yoshi hated being old. Her joints and the rest of her body were stiff and sore with age. She slept a lot, so at times it wasn’t too bad, except when she woke and had to rise after many hours. It was difficult to get her legs to cooperate. She’d slip on the hardwood floor or even on the ramp to the back yard.
FICTIONThe Disappearing ActorNick McGinley
He couldn’t quite explain it, but Aidan felt that if he didn’t look at himself in the mirror, to really look, to shore up any and all doubts, to burn the motivation coming from his eyes into his psyche, if he didn’t have a proper stare to recharge his identity, oh about, once every twenty minutes or so, he’d disappear.
FICTIONReady to Where?Brianna J.L. Smyk
She’d posed for Giorgio a few times, but that was before his Dolce & Gabbana phase, before he’d gelled his black hair into a thick screw, fastened at the nape of his neck by a clear elastic. Today, his neon green and black, geometric-print shirt—unbuttoned one, or maybe two buttons too many—was tucked, haphazardly, into his fitted leather pants, secured with a grossly-oversized belt buckle blasting the logo of his brand du jour.
FICTIONThe PatioJosh Rank
I was just sitting on the patio watching the bats fly around when her car pulled up. I didn’t know it was her at first, which was a bit of a gift. Another few peaceful moments enjoying the serene chirps as the bats blindly circled. A faint glow still hung in the sky, but she had her headlights on. I noticed the vague illumination through the thin bamboo fence bordering the patio.
FICTIONRun With MeAlyssa Murphy
He wakes up to the sound of rocks hitting his window – scarcely more than pebbles, not enough to do damage, but enough to wake him up. Sure, Dylan’s a light sleeper, but it’s still a ridiculous maneuver and that can only mean one thing. Harper McLeod, childhood best friend and platonic soulmate, is back in action and needs an accomplice.
FICTIONTrademark-Infringement ManCaleb Echterling
A man in a spherical red bodysuit perched across the street from the art museum. Binoculars pressed rings into his eye sockets. Six stories below, a white van disgorged black-clad passengers. The blue flame of a blowtorch illuminated a ground level door. The round red man’s chest jutted out. A cape fluttered behind him as he cut a silhouette against the full moon. He punched a number on his cell phone.
It had been a been a rough week from a bad month out of an even worse year, and Brother Mark had recently slipped past the edge of no longer caring. It was difficult to put an exact timeline on these kinds of things, but he was certain there was a definite moment in time that could be marked as the dissolving point of their relationship. His problem was in choosing which among many events was the worst, the one that could truly be looked to as the beginning of the end.