Category: Short Fiction
Washed Slate
Classes wouldn’t be back in session until early January, so Alice had a little time to go up north for a visit. She hadn’t seen them since summertime. That’d been a nice, long weekend lounging with her feet up and nothing of much importance in her head. It was a Read more
Close to Home
Today is a good day to die. The neighbor’s mother is dying next door, fifty feet from us. She has been dying for some days. The son arrived yesterday, though, from Ohio, all red-eyed, sleep deprived, and unshaven, and I happened to be collecting the mail. “Hi, how are you?” I Read more
The Shipwreck of the Ispolen
For one hundred and twenty-five years, I’ve been nothing more than a watery whisper, dissipating in shifting waves, crumbling to shadowy fragments, perpetually washed upon the sandy shore. My fingers are ghosts stretching longingly and painfully back to Norway, where love was once known. Cruelly, my spirit is trapped here: entrapped Read more
Amelia Bassano
A mistress at thirteen. Shocking for you – now. Not so for me – then. Juliet was only thirteen when she met, fell in love, and all too hastily, married Romeo. Perhaps that’s where life and art merge? The cloudy yet wholesome translucency of writing from experience. It isn’t a Read more
Girl Fight
Last week, I sat alone at the bar in a family-friendly local pizza place. Only two miles away from where I live, this restaurant appeals to me for other reasons, like its theme. It is “galactic,’ with the inside of the building decorated with elaborate otherworldly creations. Paper mache planets Read more
BODY JUSTICE 1977
The university doctor examined me. Then all of his students examined me. “As you can see,” he explained, “the uterus is tipped, making bringing a fetus to term unlikely.” After I had dressed and sitting in his office we had a conversation. “The risk of miscarriage is high.” “I’ve already Read more