Angel Baeza has transferred schools too many times to be good. Currently, he’s at University of Texas of San Antonio. He works as a waiter at a theme restaurant dressed in a Star-Trek costume. Fans frequently correct its inaccuracies. He is also a member of the Blind Tiger Comedy Club.

The Thing

The thing in the corner of the couple’s bedroom was dead. If ever alive. Gray fur grew into a shape as if a cloud of smoke covered their wall. Also, it had several horns and the man thought it smelled. The doctor person assured the couple the shape should have never been born, but after a frantic discussion, he admitted it could be brought back. “Genuine tears,” the doctor person prescribed. “Although, the tears will need to come from both of you.” The couple agreed, and set about next week making a schedule for who would cry when.

The first day was productive, as there were many reasons to cry. The woman would cry in the corner about the man, and the man would cry in the corner about the woman. The next day was more difficult, but the woman managed to find something sad in the weather. The man had it easier since he was berated that day at work. For the days that followed, both needed help since they could not cry alone. The woman would tear up about subjects such as the childhood dog, which the man knew she never cared for but would not interrupt since his turn was next. The couple would spend their nights wondering which subjects were most suitable for care, which would leave a better impression while also not reveal too much. Parents was a favorite, since a sour childhood made their lives look better by comparison. This continued, until finally, on a particularly good day of acting, the thing in the corner spoke up.

“Stop! Do you two have anything in common other than a love for fiction?” After which, the thing jumps out the bedroom window and landed several stories below. The couple, after many weeks of tears, found themselves quite relieved to be rid of it. Not that they let the other know.

Dan A. Cardoza’s poetry, nonfiction, and fiction have met international acceptance. He has an M.S. degree in education from C.S.U.S. Most recently his work has been featured in California Quarterly, Cleaver, Coffin Bell/2019 Anthology, Dime Show Review, Entropy, Five:2:One, Gravel, New Flash Fiction Review, Poached Hare, and Spelk.

The Cherry Box

Finally, the small box arrived with her cremations. With two failed marriages, he was experienced with death, but until now, not literally. Ole McKenzie had waited eighteen years for this well crafted cherry box to arrive, not one day less, not one day more. 

His modern kitchen was meat locker cold.  He placed the brown shipped box on the onyx counter the granite as cold as a morgue. Utility bills, not a priority.  With his pocket knife, he cut the taut sinewy twine.  McKenzie at sixty-nine looked worn beyond his age. So he was thankful he’d have less time to grieve, now that the 7x7x7 box arrived.

If nothing else, ole McKenzie was organized. He thought it convenient he could now complete his life’s mourning all at the same time. His oncologist on Monday, “Your liver is a pound of burgundy Swiss cheese. I know, I enjoyed it for dessert last summer in Annecy, France.”

As for the dying, it would be soon. He toasted his last glass of cognac at the cherry box.

~~~

On the way to his beloved Ancil Hoffman Park, built more like a Forrest, he did most of the talking. After all, it was well known, Purrdy was never one for chatter or meowing. 

~~~

Regrettably, he’d purchased Purrdy from a pet store, too common way back then. It was eighteen very long years ago. So-called animal shelters were just other names for Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Dachau. Picking was scarce, the offseason for kittens.

How could he forget? Purrdy a kitten shared a moderate enclosure with two older cats. As we approached the cage, she rose straightened her tail like a stove pipe. Then she bowed, swirled her tail into smoke, her purr a guttural low howl. She was theatrical and full of the apropos feline drama, as she sold her affection to his second wife.

Sally pleaded, “I can’t live without her. You know the loss of the two late-term babies I buried. Please, she purrs like a furry base harmonica?  Jack, I’ll have someone to nurture.” 

In less than one week, Purrdy never let anyone pet her again. Took up bivouac under their second marital bed.

~~~

Signing the divorce papers was awkward.  Sally’s attorney had written, “Sally doesn’t want her. Besides, she’s too damned feral.” McKenzie read in disbelief and silence. The truth is he never wanted Purrdy, or Maddy the dog either. That is until they needed him.

~~~

In his beloved park, near dark, he released her ashes from the box into the windy spring evening. He didn’t mind that some of her dust settled in his white hair. He’d grown to love her.

He bawled alone, except for the attending woods. He wished her well, begged her to never change, to stay brave and wild. Stalk lions, tigers and bears. Enjoy bloody rabbits. Roam the banks of the river for fall salmon; stamp the dirt of her paths to dust in the forest.

McKenzie died one week later. 

Having recently completed his first novel, The Fiddler in the Night, long-listed for the 2018 Dzanc Book Prize for Fiction, Christian is currently working on a collection of short stories and a second novel, The Monkey King. His short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines and collected works, including: Chaleur Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Litro Magazine, Spark: A Creative Anthology, Liars’ League London, .Cent Magazine, among others. Christian was a columnist and the fiction editor at the Prague Revue.

Sugar

She walked out the door, her flip-flops smacking her heels, her white short dress tight all the way down.

She reached the gravel driveway and looked at the kid’s toys, her cigarette burning down between her fingers. She looked away, somewhere, and took a drag of her cigarette. She tossed it to the gravel, toed it out, and opened the drive-shed door.

Her eyes adjusting to the dim light she walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. She opened it and walked to the workbench and pulled herself onto a high metal stool. She crossed her legs, her one foot bouncing—a nervous energy of how she was hinged, much like this place itself. Why won’t you put that greasy thing down and come over here? Why won’t you?

She took a sip of beer and leaned back, her thin milky-white forearms resting on the workbench, her dress high up on her long legs, and she tilted her head, the thickness of her blonde hair falling to one side and catching the light, just right, and she knew it, and did so without having to.

She looked at her chipped red nail polish.

She looked out the small window. At the scrubby land. At the coming heat.

A small bird came to the outside of the window. Maybe a starling. She didn’t know. She did once, when she was just a little girl.

Baby, this day is gonna be a hot one, it’s comin.

He stepped out from under a jacked-up ’69 Firebird and grabbed a rag from the workbench and wiped his hands.

He took the beer from her and took a sip.

Here, don’t take all of that.

She got up and walked to the fridge and grabbed another beer. She closed the fridge door and looked at the calendar hanging on the wall, some girl with less than little on draped over the hood of a shiny red car. They make good money, ya know. She opened the beer and looked back at the poster. A blonde, like her. It’s not just the money, it’s the connections. Ya know that, right?

She walked back to the workbench and sat on the stool.

He pushed himself forward and turned and faced her, his hands reaching past her to the workbench.

The small fan in the window rattled and blew warm sticky air.

Sweat from his forehead dropped to her thigh.

She looked at her leg, at the drop, and she put her finger to it, and it ran, like a tear.

The smooth touch of her dress, moving up, and she pushed herself forward on the stool, just a little, just enough, a lazy southern cat stretching its underbelly to the warming sun.

Sugar.

I know, baby, make it good, make it right. She looked back out the small window. Like it could be.

Caleb Hunter lives in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and has been writing off-and-on since he was 12. Although he has allowed the struggles of adulthood to keep him from the keyboard more often than he should’ve, nothing soothes his soul more than taking a blank screen and filling it with characters. A disciple of Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King (just to name a few), you will usually find him reading/writing speculative sci-fi, fantasy or horror. Recently, while sitting in the summer sun, Caleb typed out this piece of flash fiction.

I See It

Barefoot, I step out onto the warm porch and look up.

The sky is a deep, unending blue.

Green trees wave and sway as I sit, still gazing upward.

I’ve never seen a sky this clear. Especially not in the middle of August.

The humidity usually masks the atmosphere in a pale hue. Sometimes, I can’t even tell where the clouds begin or end.

But not today.

Today the clouds are stark white. Like puffy icebergs floating in the south pacific.

The weather app on my phone says its 85, but it feels more like the low 70s.

As if the sun’s rays are cooling as they pass through the deep-sea blue.

I breath in and am reminded of hiking in Colorado many years ago.

It was summer then as well, yet the Rocky Mountain air was cool and clean. So clean that it hurt to breath.

Like my lungs were working overtime, desperate for something to purify.

My lungs feel that way now. Confused, they heave so hard that I have to focus on slow inhales. Steady exhales.

After a few seconds they calm down, and I begin to relax.

Bringing my eyes down, I see our outside cat casually twisting on his back. Letting the grass and dirt take care of a stubborn itch. 

He suddenly spins over onto all fours and freezes. Staring intently at something across the street.

Neighbors begin to appear on the street. Scrambling out of yards and houses towards something at the end of the cul-de-sac.

All of them murmuring and pointing up.

I stand to see what’s going on, but my view is blocked by the swaying trees that border our lot.

So, I jog down the driveway. My feet slapping against the pavement.

And then, rounding the mailbox…I see it.

Way up in the massive oak towering from Lorena Milford’s backyard, stands Lorena herself.

Her bare feet somehow gripping the small branches jutting from the treetop.

She looks like one of the stark white clouds as she stands against the vivid blue sky.

Her nightgown stirring in the breeze.

No one calls up to her.

Murmuring and gaping, they all just stand there. Mesmerized by this impossible balancing act.

Any second now, she’ll lose her grip and come splattering down on the hot asphalt.

This realization turns my stomach, so I sprint through the small crowd to the base of the tree.

“Lori…now don’t move, ok? I’m coming up”

“Do you see it?” she asks, in a dreamy tone that floats down like a feather.

“See what Lori?”

She weaves back and forth as the wind kicks up.

“Shit.” I whisper hoarsely.

Rolling up my jeans, I back up and take a running leap to the lowest branch.

Bark shifts and crumbles as I tighten my grip and pull myself up into the green leaves.

“Do you see it?” She asks again, still in that dreamy tone.

“I see the ground leaving is what I see.” I pant out the words. My chest tightening with fear.

I reach up to the next limb, then the next. 

My feet tingle as I try not to look down. I never liked climbing trees.

Not as a boy, and certainly not as a 30-year-old man.

Strangely enough, the higher I go, the easier the climb seems to be.

As if I were getting lighter.

I feel the tree trunk narrowing and bending slightly as I finally reach her feet.

“Alright now…nice and easy.”

“Do you see it?”

“Lori, that limb is barely thick enough for a squirrel, let alone two grown-ass people. Come on…take my hand.”

Without looking down, she grabs my trembling arm and pulls me up onto the dangerously small limb. As if I weighed nothing at all.

The limb bounces only for a moment, then steadies as if held up by some strange force.

Holding my hand, she raises it and points ahead. 

“Do you see it?” She asks. Her voice now distant and faint.

I squint into the darkening blue void.

“My God Lori…I see it.”

I recently read about Vantablack.

Scientists made it in a lab and claim that it absorbs 99.96% of light.

They claim it’s the deepest black known to humankind.

They claim it’s the closest human eyes will ever get to gazing into a black hole.

They were wrong.

God help us…they were wrong.

As a creative director, James wrote TV commercials, ads and radio spots for all kinds of familiar brands and products. He firmly believes in the adage that says, “You get only one exclamation point to use in your lifetime. Choose wisely.”

Singing the DMV Blues

No one ever looks forward to a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office. This unwanted excursion is on the same list as “Go to root canal appointment” and “Time to take colonoscopy prep liquid.” But there are times that a visit cannot be avoided.

Since I knew the local office closed at 5 PM and all I needed was a form, I waited until 4:50 to make my appearance. As I strode in, I thought, “Wonderful. There’s no one here. I’ll be out in seconds.”

I zipped past the annoying little machine that dispenses a ticket with a number on it, moved past a roomful of empty chairs and sauntered up to the counter. The one and only person behind it was occupied with something on his computer and took no recognition of my presence.

After coughing a few times, issuing a loud yawn and possibly making cat meow sounds, I caused him to stir. The civil servant slowly turned his head to acknowledge me and at snail speed, managed to utter, “Number?”

I said, “Number? I’m the only one here.”

He said, “You need a number.”

Looking around at the cavernous, empty room, I was about to ask “Why?” when I realized this was not a great idea. This imbecilic little man could make my life miserable by suddenly requiring me to show my birth certificate, the serial number of my dishwasher and demanding that I name three countries in Africa.

So I turned around, trod back to the entrance so the annoying little machine could spit out my number: 132. By the time I got back to the counter, the creep behind it was nowhere to be seen. So I sat in one of the uncomfortable, government provided plastic chairs until he appeared. Looking at the counter on the wall, he said, ”132.”

Playing it out, I paused and looked around to see if any of the imaginary people in the room might have this number. Seeing none, I approached the counter. His processor must have been running slowly, because I named the form I needed and he wordlessly stared at me. I give good stare, as well, so our stare-athon continued for what seemed like an hour.

Trust me, I’ve stared for even less time at the baboons at the zoo, but they at least entertain you with leaps, grimaces and scratching. This guy did none of that. Instead, he reached under the counter and glacially came up with my form.

I resisted the temptation to ask him if he was always this unpleasant or if it’s a job requirement but realized he had the power to put my name on a DMV watch list and have me ticketed for parking in my own driveway.

On the way out, I really didn’t mean to trip over the table holding the number machine, sending it crashing to the floor.

Gloria R. Buckley has been published by Defiant Scribe, Academy of Heart and Mind, Chaleur Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Red Hyacinth Journal, Sensations Magazine, Alcoholism Magazine, Chimera Magazine, Journal of English Language and Literature, Hermann Hesse Page Journal, Virginia Woolf Blog, Focus Magazine, Chimera Magazine and many other journals of poetry and prose. A self- published collection of seventy five poems is available on Amazon.com. She has a short story which will be published in October 2019 with Me First Magazine.

She is a practicing attorney for over thirty years. She holds a BA in English with honors and JD from Seton Hall. She has a Masters with Distinction in English Literature from Mercy College. She is enrolled in MA in writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

Electrified Feet

I felt the rumbling of emotions electrified down to my toes, igniting anger, fear and confusion as I stood planted on my father’s grave.  The trees, now forty years, had grown and leaned with age, as if maple leaves were weeping down above me.  His brother lay dying just doors down the road.  While a stranger occupied, nullified my childhood in my grandmother’s home.  My feet trembled as I marched along his grave to drive and gawk at the open window as my uncle laid almost to rest-alone with strangers.  Such is the Irish Catholic pride persecuting my mother because of divorce and remarriage to no less-a Jew.  Educated bigots banning me from what remained my father’s mother’s house-my grandmother.  What should have been a blood lineage to my brother and I-the only offspring and what truly was left of my father’s short-lived life.  Yet, no one cared-ever about us.

Vagabonds to a sixty’s revolution of mad men and women consumed in nicotine, scotch, little cash and too much time on a Saturday night.  Fights fueled by liquor and Librium.  Suicidal gases flowing from the kitchen oven where my father’s head laid to rest on the open door.  My mother’s frantic screams-a shroud of safety in all her insecurities beckoned me to unlock the handle.  It all seemed like a slow-motion sequence of clips.  Reel to slow reel as they lifted him up and out.  Why couldn’t he be strong, be a father, someone with a sense and fluidity of language?  Instead of the silent corpse his remains always a scalpel of silence slashed against my heart.

James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California. Mr. Kelly is a U.S. Army Veteran (1967-1971), Mr. Kelly was in the Army Security Agency and served in Eritrea, East Africa, where he was a teletype intercept operator. He has been a journalist for Gannet, a travel book editor, and had a score of labor jobs — the in-between, jobs you get from being an English major. He retired as a writer-editor for the Forest Service, where he spent the a decade in Oregon and Alaska respectively. He started writing poetry in college on the GI Bill, and after college continued and gave occasional readings in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. His poems and stories have appeared in Westwind Review, (Ashland, Oregon), Open Sky (Seattle), Siskiyou Journal (Ashland, Oregon), The Sun (Chapel Hill, NC); Don’t Read This (Ashland, Oregon), Table Rock Sentinel, (Medford, Oregon), Poetry Motel (Duluth, Minnesota), Poems for a Scorpio Moon & Others (Ashland, Oregon), The Red Gate & Other Poems, a handset letterpress chapbook published by Cowan & Tetley (1984, Vancouver, B.C.). In the past three years Silver Birch Press (Los Angeles) so glad is my heart (Duluth, Minnesota), Cargo Literary, (Prince Edward Island, Canada), Fiction Attic, Rock and Sling (Spokane, WA), Edify (Helena, AL) and Flash Fiction have all featured one or more of his stories.

She Owned a Restaurant Up in Bend

“Ever see a hanging Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Yep, my folks took me to one in Jacksonville,” Ernie said.

“I was about nine or ten. Spent the night, had a picnic.

‘I expect this will teach me a valuable lesson,’ was the feller’s last words.’ Ernie said.

“I don’t remember what he did,” Ernie said.

“Ernie did you ever see a Grizzly bear?”  Jack asked.

“Nope, they was all kilt out by my time.”  Ernie said, “Knew an old’ timer from Jacksonville that had been mauled by a grizzly bear, he said he was out with three fellers and he got attacked. The bear bit on him, and bit on him, and bit on him, then he played dead and the bear went away. He said the other fellers found him and started haulin’ him back to town through the brush, but he just hurt too bad. ‘Fellers,’ he said, ‘jest lay me on top that there gray brush and leave me be—I’m a goner.’

“So, Ernie said, “they left him there for dead. He said he stayed there on top of the gray brush for a long time, then got to feelin’ better and walked back to town.” 

“How many whore houses were in Medford Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Six! There was six whorehouses in Medford.”  Ernie said.

“Molly’s was my favorite.”  Ernie said. 

“Molly’s was right above the Hubbard Brothers Hardware store. I saw Molly about twenty-five years ago. She owned a restaurant up in Bend, still serving the public.”  Ernie said. 

“Were you born in this house Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Nope, across the Highway next to the road that goes up the hill to the mine. We had a two-room house there. The mine started to pay, and my parents built this house closer to the barn and the river. This here house was built in 1900. I barely remember the other place. This is mostly where I’ve lived except for the War. Lonely since my wife died, had to stop driving last year. Mrs. Ownby, gets me anywhere I need to go. My daughter comes down once a year from Salem. What? Oh, yeah, I fished a lot in the summertime, limit on trout? Oh, it was a hundred back then. Lots of times I caught one-twenty-five!”

“What did you do in the Great war Ernie?  Jack asked.

“Machine gunner,” Ernie said.

“Mowed ’em down til they stopped comin’,” Ernie said.

“Ever climb Mt. Thielsen Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Six times,” Ernie wheezed, from an abrupt old man kind of certainty, and then he held up one hand with fingers extended and an upward thumb from the other hand to only waist height, and then let them down in an exhaustion of age.

“Last time was 1975,” Ernie said, looking off the precipice of his front porch, “I was 79.”

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. His novel, short stories, and poems are works still defining his style. He lives in 1974, has been married for 27 years, and collects occupations (the current tally is 100). His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

My term, the “Franklin Smirk” will go viral once it is read. Bank on it.

When the People Find They Can Vote Themselves Money, It Will Herald the End of the Republic

Benjamin Franklin sat comfortably in the gas chamber. Perhaps he remained calm because he did not have his bifocals on. Perhaps he did not witness the demise of Jefferson yesterday. I believe he knew what Samuel Adams had planned.

Samuel Adams always had a plan.

I saw that smirk that so annoyed Franklin’s judge. The curl of that “Founding Father’s” lips spoke volumes. It was an “I know more than you do” look so many of the newly appointed judges hated to see in their hastily improvised courts. Having so many of the King’s subjects, actually seeing that smirk, during the 10-minute show trial annoyed even him more.

“Benjamin!” It was enough to bring Judge Rollin’s court to order and insult the defendant one last time.

Judge Rollin should have been used to receiving less than expected by now.

Last year, during the reparations portion of the armistice, General Rollin finally received his ballot approved lump-sum payment against the Old Republic and invested heavily in the “Temporal Initiative” to rid the Kingdom of the memory of those “American Revolutionaries” of yore. To General Rollin (who also purchased his new position of Judge in the King’s court) the founding fathers were an impediment to the progress he, and the other new judges, was making toward writing a new history for the new future. By bringing each one forward, informing each of their conviction, and then executing each, the “Temporal Initiative” would leave the King’s subjects hungry, in the intellectual and moral void, for a purpose, a purpose only Judge Rollin would supply.

I knew all of this. From the execution of Jefferson, how could I forget?

And still Franklin smirked.

The time was nigh and Judge Rollin was impatient. The crowd of “official” witnesses grew weary with each passing moment. The door of the gas chamber closed and I saw Benjamin Franklin for the last time.  I could not bear to see a repeat of Jefferson’s horrific death.

So I left before the cyanide pill dropped.

In a mere 1 hour later, Benjamin Franklin made his first news conference, interrupting the King’s speech, hijacking the King’s own broadcast monopoly, to quote and honor the memory of Mark Twain (executed three days prior).

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Apparently, Mr. Franklin knew the cyanide pill would not fill the gas chamber with hydrogen cyanide gas, but the entirety of the witness gallery instead. By remaining in the chamber, he would be unexposed to the effects of the toxin. Judge Rollin and the elite members of the “Temporal Initiative” died an equally horrible death to that of Thomas Jefferson.

That Franklin Smirk, as it became to be known, was according to Samuel Adam’s plan.

And Samuel Adams always had a plan.

Nicole E. Beck has worked various stints as a bank teller, an office drudge, and a retail bookseller, while completing a bachelor’s in filmmaking and art history. She likes history, museums, and long poems.

Interval

     His motel room overlooked a patch of grass, a dumpster and the divided highway, seen from the second floor. He heard the bathroom faucet drip. Propping himself up, he noticed a pair of loafers on the other side of the bed. Dirty socks stuffed inside them. His toes wiggled in his own sneakers, and he got up carefully. Under the armchair he discovered sunglasses. On the seat was a plastic grocery bag containing three red shirts, men’s button-downs, neatly folded. In the bathroom, he turned off the faucet and stumbled against an orange cooler. He took a breath and opened it. The inside was dry and empty.

     He lay on his stomach but sleep evaded him. He aspired to be tenuous, ignored, unreal. It was a puzzle to him why anyone bothered speaking.  He got up and tried on one of the shirts. It fit too tight across his chest. His wrists stuck out beyond the cuff. Looking at his reflection in the window, with his t-shirt sagging under the red button-up, he noticed the stitching on the hem was unraveling. And the red shirt, though fine in all other respects, had one broken button. As he plucked and worried the rough plastic edge a laugh escaped him.

     Someone rapped on the door, three light furtive taps. He checked the lock and chain and then for good measure pulled closed the musty curtains.  At this point seeing the other face was unthinkable, not even a possibility. In a fit of perversity he pulled on the sweat-stiffened socks. A barrage of louder knocks spurred him to slip on the loafers instead of his own shoes. He had been granted this and he was ready to assume ownership of the orange cooler.

     The knocking increased to pounding as he stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. He thought this time he’d find out how long his solitude could stretch. The battering continued as he polished the sunglasses on his shirt, and after twelve hours silence conquered, winning back the room. He took a celebratory trip down the hall, passed the closed blank faces of doors.

Julia Gaughan writes from Lawrence, Kansas, where she lives with her family and books and cats and dog and from which she travels as much as possible. She can be found online through Medium and @julia_gaughan on Twitter. 

The Greater Good

You know that saying about if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day but if you teach a man to fish, he’ll feed himself until the corporations kill all the fish through pollution or unsustainable farming practices and he’ll die because of the lack of universal healthcare to treat his mercury-poisoned blood?

It doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

You know that saying about how a penny saved is a penny earned even though that penny saved doesn’t feed your crying children or pay for your prescription or put the gas in your car to get to your job that only gives you a raise when the minimum wage goes up and can’t earn any interest when it’s just helping stem the tide of overdrafts?

But has anyone tried professional football?