Cooking Creole

by A. M. Dellamonica

At seventeen, it was music. Guitar.

Then, at twenty-four: speechmaking. Rabble-rousing, his mother had called it. Binding a group of listeners — big, small, middling — with his voice. Inspiring the local grocery clerk to dump her useless husband. Selling roses in boxes on lonely street-corners. Swaying a strike vote at a fish packing plant on the East Coast.

Stupid, dangerous skill. What had he been thinking? (Continue Reading…)

Baby Teeth

By Lina Rather

Laura watched from the window while Mama took the salt packets they’d pocketed from a Speedway and sprinkled a circle around the house to hide them from the monster. She tore the top of each one off with her teeth and spread it as far as she could, then dropped the white paper scraps on the ground. Laura had stuffed her pockets with packets, so she knew Mama had enough to walk around the whole perimeter of the property. Not that it was much—the next mobile home sat just ten yards away.

When she came back inside, she swept her hands together to brush off the salt and sat next to Laura at the table. “Okay, honey, show me again.”

Laura opened her mouth. She’d been probing the sore spots (one in front, on the bottom, and one on the top right) and now her mouth tasted tinny. Mama touched her swollen gums.

“These just fell out today?” (Continue Reading…)

Dying Lessons

By Troy L. Wiggins

I learned how to bend light from my mother. Nights after I came home from math and Spanish tutoring were spent in our backyard, deep in the trees where no one would catch me learning the basics of refraction, drilling the slight movements that would keep me from moving too much air, or creating too large a shadow and revealing myself.

“This is a last line of defense,” she would say, telling me over and over again like I wasn’t listening, which I usually wasn’t because I’d rather be in the house playing Final Fantasy or something. Mama didn’t care and would talk right through my distraction. “The number one thing to do in any situation is figure out a way to calm things down before you have to blink out.” (Continue Reading…)

Shadow Boy

By Lora Gray

I am sixteen and sitting on the edge of an empty subway platform when Peter, forever small, reappears. His black eyes are bright, and he smells like licorice and cinnamon. He is wearing purple mittens and a pigeon-feather skirt.

“Who the hell dressed you today?” I ask.

“I did.” Peter tips his head as if considering. “My taste is terrible. Tragic, really, but I didn’t have much choice.”

“Everybody has a choice.”

“Do they, dear Prudence?” (Continue Reading…)

The Last Exorcist

by Danny Lore 

Author’s Note: This piece was commissioned and then declined by a prominent magazine. The only information that has been altered/omitted are locations, as those have been deemed a national security risk. Re-post and share at will.

Naheem is our last great exorcist.

When you point this fact out to him, he barely blinks. It is a title he accepts, not with humility or even resignation, but with frustration. “We should have dozens like me out there on the streets,” he argues, “hundreds. It’s why we’re in this mess.” (Continue Reading…)

Daniel

by Ashley Blooms

Ellie watches her husband from the front porch. He makes a lean shadow against the twilight, his arms outstretched, his heels lifting from the ground and dropping again. The wind rustles the branches of the trees overhead, their limbs picked clean of leaves, their roots bitten with cold. The windows rattleshake inside their panes, a thin vibration that the house carries through the walls and into the boards of the porch. The feeling trembles beneath Ellie’s bare toes as she wraps her arms around her chest, cups her elbows in her palms.

Her husband looks at her from across the yard. He holds up his hands so she can see a bright pearl of light reflected in the center of the spiderweb. The thin strands shudder, curving away from the twigs that bind it together, but the web holds on. Ellie turns and walks back into the house alone. (Continue Reading…)

The Aunties Return the Ocean

By Chris Kuriata

Auntie Roberta landed badly on the roof of her escarpment house, scraping her knees across the flagstone shingles and splitting her pantyhose. Her arms were too full of black water to keep her balance so she nearly slid off the edge.

She carried so much ocean she barely knew where to hide it all. Inside her stony home, she filled the kitchen drawers and cupboards with cold dark brine. Every pot and tankard as well.

She quickly ran out of places, yet her weary arms were still loaded with the stuff. Where would it all fit? Auntie Roberta got on her knees and stuffed the final bits of ocean into the mouse holes. She heard the panicked mice squeak before drowning.

What an exhausting evening she’d endured. At the appointed hour, all the Aunties of the world had banded together like a swarm of locusts, and set upon the heart of the ocean. Their grubby hands tore the water apart, breaking up the reflection of the moon as they scrambled to load every last drop into their arms.  All along the empty ocean floor, fish flopped and ships jammed into rock beds. The neighbours had called the Aunties’ bluff, refusing to give in to their demands. So, just as the Aunties threatened, they stole the ocean.
During the theft, Auntie Roberta kept close watch on the other Aunties, noticing none of her sisters carried away as much ocean as she did. Auntie Roberta always did more than her fair share and never received thanks. The other Aunties thought they were smarter than her, but really they were just lazier.

“Hey!” Auntie Robert shouted. “Get away from there!”

A burr covered cat with collapsed ears sat on the kitchen table, lapping away at a mug filled with ocean. Auntie Roberta flung a wooden spoon and sent the cat retreating through a gnawed hole in the parlour wall.

“Sneaky thief,” she huffed. (Continue Reading…)

Waters of Versailles

by Kelly Robson

[Note: This is Part 3 of a three-part novella. Visit our previous posts to read Part 1 and Part 2.]

10.

Sylvain stood on the roof of the north wing, the gardens spread out before him. The fountains jetted high and strong, fifteen hundred nozzles ticking over reliably as clockwork, the water spouts throwing flickering shadows in the low evening light.

The gardens were deserted as any wilderness. Inside, everyone was preparing for the evening’s long menu of events. Outside, the statues posed and the fountains played for the moon and stars alone.

Sylvain was taking advantage of this quiet and solitary hour to do one final check of the velvet pipes. He had already felt every inch of the new connection, examined the seams all the way to the point where the fabric sleeve dove off the roof to disappear through a gap above a garret window. (Continue Reading…)

Waters of Versailles

by Kelly Robson

[Note: This is Part 2 of a three-part novella. Please visit last week’s post to read Part 1. Click here for part 3.]

5.

Sylvain paced the Grand Gallery, eyeing the cracked ceiling above the statue of Hermes. There had been no further accidents with the pipes. He had spent the entire night checking every joint and join accompanied by a yawning Bull. At dawn, he’d taken Bear up to the rooftops to check the reservoirs.

Checking the Grand Gallery was his last task. He was shaved and primped, even though at this early hour, it would be abandoned by anyone who mattered, just a few rustics and gawkers.

He didn’t expect to see Annette d’Arlain walking among them. (Continue Reading…)