The Third Time I Saw a Fox

by Cécile Cristofari

“You know what I think, the world is going bonkers,”’ the circus man says.

I nod, draw a gulp of burning coffee from my thermos flask. A decent night watch needs to start with a little bitterness on the tongue, the first drink just a little too hot before the next cups fade to lukewarm. It’s the only excitement I’m afforded, after all. No one ever breaks into natural history museums.

“Who needs the world when we have this?” I say, encompassing the anatomy exhibits with a wave of the hand. “And the two of us, of course.”

The circus man nods, sagely. Even though I’m not looking at him, I can hear it from the creaking of his vertebrae, grinding against the copper wire that holds them together. (Continue Reading…)

John Gladwin Says . . .

by Oliver Onions

If we are to believe John Gladwin, the oncoming car made no attempt to avoid him, but held straight on. It held on at top speed, he says, for the first he saw of it was the sudden blinding gold of the afternoon sun on its screen, almost on top of him. He was not woolgathering or thinking of anything else at the time, and he had been for years a teetotaller. As for there not being any other car there at all, he naturally scouts the idea, for if there had been no other car why should he have made that violent and instinctive swerve? He did swerve; something hurtled past him; into the hedge and through it he and his car plunged; and where a moment before the white secondary road had run straight as a ruler for miles, he found himself on soft green, still at the wheel, his screen unbroken, his engine still running.

He says that his first thought was this — people ought not to drive like that. All was quiet on the road behind him, but the fellow could hardly be out of sight yet. John Gladwin came to life. He climbed as quickly as he was able out of the car and pushed through the hole he had made in the hedge.

Properly speaking he had not come through the hedge at all. He had broken through a thin part of it, a gap, thinly tangled over, and his car had come to rest on an old grass-grown track beyond. He looked first down the long white road. There was no sign of any other car, and no other roads ran into it. Then he looked at his own wheel marks in the dust, and they rather scared him. Heavens! What a mercy he had been crawling along! It would be just as well to report a lunatic who drove like that.

(Continue Reading…)

Shim Hyeon and the Ocean God

by Seoung Min Kim

“They usually send maidens.”

The Ocean God’s voice is a deep and resonant drawl. The whole palace smells of brine and sealife, like the fish market back in Inju. There are lights, but not from candles or lanterns — it’s a faint luminescence radiating from the walls. Shim Hyeon has his forehead pressed to the cool stone of the palace floor, but even if it was raised, he could not see the throne clearly from this distance.

“What is your name?”

“I am known in the village as Shim Bongsa.” Shim the Blind — and only for the past ten years since his eyes clouded, but the village must not remember him as he was before. He doesn’t let his true name leave his tongue. (Continue Reading…)

– 4 –

“There’s been a fire over at the Bosque Verde.” Leandro entered the house, removed his coat, and hung it on a hook on the wall. “Dry leaves, it seems.”

Eduardo shuddered, his nails rasping against his cane. He was sitting on an armchair he’d put where the old pendulum clock had struck its last sigh five years before.

“Will it reach us?”

Bosque Verde was a grove at the other side of the Amorims’ property. It couldn’t be seen from there, but the scent of ashes stuck to the air like the remains of a fireplace. Eduardo had woken up that morning with the smell and yelled for Leandro, asking him to find out its source as soon as possible. Leandro obeyed. He was always there for his grandpa, though sometimes the old man seemed not to notice. In the core of old Eduardo’s soul, he probably missed Joana a lot more than she deserved. (Continue Reading…)

A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair

by Renan Bernardo

– 1 –

I was conceived by a carpenter with quivering hands in the back of a lumberyard. She was called Anatólia. Some days she had to fix flaws, sawing one or two parts of me again. On other days she hurled chunks of me against the wall, screaming at the bashful furniture she’d built, lined against the far wall. If she knew she’d bestowed consciousness on me with her art, perhaps she’d have other thoughts. I didn’t care. She was sturdy and careful and didn’t mind her son babbling about her being too old for this kind of work. Oak trees lasted for millennia. She had but a dozen wrinkles around her cheeks. Her particular way of wheezing meant nothing. She would last.

Ignoring all the humility chipped into my wood by her hands, I was a true work of oak art. Seahorses adorned the palmettes atop my backrest, which was ornately twirled with bubbles and the contours of fishes. I had cockleshells on my apron and water lilies on my four feet, so exquisitely wrought that I feared the day someone would push me against fellow furniture. My upholstered cushion was velvety and crimson, not unlike the eyes of Anatólia’s son the day he entered the lumberyard and brought me to my first sunlight bath. The day I found out things I didn’t want to. (Continue Reading…)