31 July 2008

Man Prize

AT THE TWO-WAY: "Would you like to see my family?" the man asked, smacking his lips. He didn't wait. He pulled up a stool. "Let me show you some titties." The man pulled out a worn leather wallet; it was skinned where it folded and when he flipped it open a portfolio of women fell out. The women were in black and white with nothing on. "The first one is Darla, the second I call Jessie, the third—," and so on, until the fifth who happened to be an Adrian, who also happened to be his cousin by marriage, who also happened to be 300 pounds. "And let me show you the most beautiful thing you ever did see," the man said, whistling through the bridge of his moustache. His eyes were small. He had a deviated septum and in the middle of winter he wore a t-shirt.

The man pulled out an old newspaper clipping of a 150-pound trout. He kept it in the last plastic sleeve, "Lookit." He licked his lips. His teeth stained a myriad of colors.

by caroline picard

29 July 2008

Maternal

“Am I maternal?”
“Please don’t make me answer that.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she said. “You just knocked that little kid over because you didn’t want to ‘call uncle’ and move out of the way first. You were like in a wild west showdown with a kid.”
“That little sucker was coming straight for me.”
“He’s four!”
“You’re four!”
She stared at me.

by amy stern

23 July 2008

These Are the Times

When My Family Gets Carried Away

Somebody stole the church van—Sunday morning!
during service!—so no one is going anywhere. The
hooptie had been purple like the plush pews and kneelers
of the sanctuary. Pastor asks again for my music box,
which has crumpled under a conga. We follow Dad down
a side street, to a boy chiseled from sandstone. He leads us
to apartments made entirely of fence. He has brothers.
Mother, Sister, and I wait in a stairwell while they punish
Father. We will all face this, one by one. My father wails
and I know they’ve started with his knees.

by devin bustin

22 July 2008

Off Highway One

On Christmas, after the miscarriage, we ate plates of stone crab at a beachfront bar, somewhere outside of Islamadora, celebratory and stoned, using the special tools, the grip and hammer, plus drinking, of course, and drinking and drinking and drinking past noon and past sunset and past the time they turned off the strings of white lights around the pavilions and piers and told us Merry Christmas and that they were shutting up, that we should head in to bed.

They locked panels in place, chained stools together. We didn’t have a room at the attached resort, so we slept in the rental car and in the morning went swimming early, the Gulf water cold, hard-feeling. Then we ate salads and conch fritters, drank through another day, taking breaks this time to apply suntan lotion to our burns. All day the resort workers put out folding chairs. At sundown, there was a wedding. Waiters swarmed around handing out plates to everyone, so we ate cake that night, with little sugar starfish on top, and we toasted plastic flutes of champagne, our arms locked around each other not in parody but in a kind of bruised homage. To the future, we said. To the two of us.

by spencer dew

21 July 2008

The Dark Knight

Bobby snapped on Halloween.

Every morning the lady with the rope cruised the base, picking up Bobby and the other students assigned to her route. The children trudged out of their homes and joined the rope. With their right hands on, they’d walk in an orderly fashion suggesting not that they were headed to school, but rather that they were being led to a chamber full of hyenas that loved to laughingly devour grade schoolers and use their #2 pencils like toothpicks.

With his black cape soaring small behind him, Bobby stopped in his tracks that Wednesday morning. After quickly adjusting his homemade utility belt, he turned abruptly, fixing both hands on the rope, and pulled, hard, cracking the rope like a whip, sending pint-sized princesses, skeletons, ghosts, and—most importantly—Superman to the ground.

“Robert Forkson!” the rope-keeper bellowed, surveying the mass of confused and costumed children on the asphalt.

Bobby ignored her and calmly walked to the end of the line, to Rich Weber, the boy in the Superman garb.

“What are you doing?” Rich cried, holding his left arm across the S on his chest like a Kryptonian infant. “I think you broke my arm!”

Bobby placed his hands on his hips, the bat signal on his chest glowing in the post-breakfast sun.

“Man of Steel my butt.”

by elizabeth wylder

17 July 08

She, Blue

“It’s good you’re not coming home tonight.” Wolf gripped an icy sill. “I’ll be able to get some work done!” She stared for cracked, bled moments a face speaking to her canals yellow fluid filled. A Lark had seen, a Lark called cops. Wolf bit his lip till kip in sleep. She hit icy ground again, again, harder and harder. No slumber, more wide-eyed mused her sleep face. “Terrible,” he said. “What?” She woke and said. Nothing. No conversation felt so complete.

by c. robin madigan

15 July 08
Things Changed, Of Course

            We used to keep you in a box, Charlotte.

            That’s where you slept, where you were most often, in a box in the yard in the cold.

            The corners of your box frayed with splinters. You kept your fuzzy blue blanket inside.

            Yes, Charlotte, the blanket was blue, baby blue, and soft like cotton balls. Soft like your cotton-y tail.

            There was no one to read you to sleep at night. We were all in the house, you see, but you were in the yard, alone.

            We loved you, but you were alone.

            We watched you crouch in your box; you tucked your head to your chest. We saw your eyes, black like the sky; we saw them dart from side to side; you watched the trees above you bend.

            Now you’re inside where it’s warm.

            Hop to the window.

            Climb on the footstool.

            Don’t press your nose to the glass, it’s Thursday and the windows are clean.

            Look out in the yard.

            There is your box. See the rough corners? See the yellow paint peel away?

            No, Charlotte, it’s empty. Even your blanket is gone.

            There is a stack of linens in the closet in the hall. See the sunlight? It slants across the door.

            There now, look inside. You can choose any blanket you want.

            Blue? You want the blue one? You’re accustomed to it, I know.

            But you’re in the house now, Charlotte. We don’t use the blue blanket here.

            Don’t be ungrateful; you know where your box is. And don’t forget, you know where the cellar is too.

            Things changed when you weren’t paying attention.

            You’re in the house where it’s warm.

by sarah terez rosenblum

10 July 08

The Kindly Old Neighbor Lady

“So if, uh, I wanted to buy something: perhaps a snake whip or a PVC paddle, maybe that deer-skin flogger you were talking about—that sounds fantastic—I can just stop by and pick it up Monday through Thursday?”

“I only have rubber paddles. The weight of the rubber really comes in handy. Snookers, get down! Your hubby’ll love it.”

“Sure, sure. That’ll do. Sorry, uh, I’m kind of new at all of this.”

“If you have a proclivity for PVC, I’ve got a nurse’s uniform, a school girl’s uniform—Oh! And this excellent harness. Mary Poppins! You and Snookers leave that TV Guide be! You strap it around—”

“No, no, that’s alright. Baby steps, you know—”
“Of course, Dearie. Snookers! If you chew that—if you chew up Barbara Walters’ chicken marsala recipe, I swear to God!”

“But, uh, yeah… I can pop in during the middle of the week with my checkbook and—”

“Oh, no. No, no, Dearie. I can leave an order form with you. Ooh, and don’t let me forget—I wanna get that peanut butter pie recipe from you for Milt’s 80th. If he loves one thing it’sSurvivor. And if he loves two things it’s Survivor and peanut butter.”

“Right. Uh, I just thought it’d be easiest if I swung by and—”
“Oh, I don’t keep the fetish gear at home, Sweetie. It frightens the cats.”

by elizabeth wylder

8 July 08

The Lead Pastor’s Visit

He pastored thousands, but he came to my house, appeared in my hallway. There he stood, with that hair. I expected a tiny microphone along his cheekbone. Since he didn’t have one, he didn’t talk. I watched from the window as his eighteen-wheeler roared off the driveway, climbed the curb, and could not round our cul-de-sac or return to the main drag.

by devin bustin

7 July 08

Piranha Diet

“God, I’m full!” said Harvey after inhaling a 100 calorie pack of baked Cheetos. There was a time when he could have scarfed down a large bag of actual Cheetos between a steak dinner and a hot fudge sundae, but those days were behind him. Harvey lost 83 pounds, and could now be fully satisfied with small fries, single cheeseburgers, naked chicken breasts, and light beer. He was painlessly losing weight thanks to Pirantamine, a new diet pill. Once ingested, the pill would break open and release a genetically engineered piranha into the stomach. The piranha would eat half of what is in ingested into the stomach, then rapidly swim around to cause a simulated wooziness. Once finished with its business, it would swim down the intestines into the anus where it would be smothered by outgoing stool, die, and later be excreted out.

Harvey opened his bottle of Pirnatamine, and popped the last pill. It was kidney shaped, as bumpy as a rock paved road, and smelled like rubber cement. Still, Harvey popped it as if it were any normal looking/smelling pill, and went to bed.

The next morning, Harvey’s cat meowed loudly by his bowl, announcing to the world that it was breakfast time. After waiting an hour, Harvey’s cat walked into his room to get him up. She jumped onto the bed, and discovered a giant, bloody hole in Harvey’s stomach and a two-headed, human heart shaped piranha bouncing on the sheets.

by rory jobst