January 2024 | fiction
Sweat loosened the bandages covering the welts on Billy’s buttocks as he dribbled up court. The black road colors of his uniform masked the blood stains. On the sidelines, Coach shouted instructions. Coach had the best players in the city, often the state, sometimes the nation, but didn’t trust them to think for themselves. Billy deked the defender, stepped back, canned the three. Another national high school championship. Coach’s tenth. Billy’s first.
“Play for me,” Coach promised. “There’ll be shoes, basketball camps, cash under the table, one and done in college, NBA millions.” The memorabilia on Coach’s office walls vouchsafed the truth of his boasts. Humiliation was not part of the sales pitch.
It started the third game of the year, a 120-48 rout. As Billy showered, Coach lashed the air with a towel. Disgusted by the way Coach ran up the score, Billy feigned an injury, hobbling to the bench early in the fourth quarter. Coach’s obsession with the USA Today national rankings stripped the fun from winning. Coach snapped Billy’s butt with the towel. His first welt. Coach flicked the towel again. Second welt. “You want a future, you march to my tune.”
Billy heard stories how Coach forced players to have sex. “Coach’s queen,” said a senior. “Picks a new one each season.” Billy didn’t know what he’d do if Coach queened him.
Coach made his players practice five days a week during the off season. At one practice, Coach distributed new shoes, switching brands. “These give more support.” Coach collected the old shoes to donate to the local landfill.
A senior explained. “None of us can be seen wearing the old shoes. Not even on the streets. Violates Coach’s contract.
Billy absent-minded his way through practice, flubbed fast break drills, missed jumpers, didn’t switch on defense. “Laps,” Coach shouted.
“Too much basketball, too little study hall,” Billy replied.
“Play for me or play for no one.”
Billy fell into a rhythm as he ran. He imagined where he’d be after high school if he transferred. A public college. Working two jobs to pay tuition. Living at home to save money. No time for hoops. Watching the NCAA tournament on television.
Coach waited by the door to the locker room, his arms folded across his chest, his stinger bulging inside his sweat pants. Running gave Billy clarity.
A custodian found Coach the next morning. “Blunt force trauma,” ruled the coroner. “Accident. Slipped on wet tiles and hit his head on the floor.”
Billy didn’t attend the funeral.
Frederic Liss
Liss is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and a nominee for the storySouth Million Writers Award. His short story collections have been finalists for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize sponsored by University of Georgia Press, the St. Lawrence Book Award sponsored by Black Lawrence Press, and the Bakeless Prize sponsored by Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and Middlebury College. He has published 60 short stories in literary and commercial magazines. Please visit his website at www.sfredericliss.com for more information.
January 2024 | fiction
Alicia pulled over at her ex’s house to allow the storm time to pass. They were not-unwillingly stranded in the darkness, submerged in a pile of greasy pizza boxes and crushed beer cans. Rain pounded the roof in violent sheets. He lit emergency candles and crafted a pallet of old, musty comforters that felt like quicksand. Alicia had wanted him to take her that night. Instead, they stroked each other’s hair and ate rum-raisin ice cream.
She awoke to him smashing a bag of whole-bean coffee with a hammer and promised to buy him an electric grinder the next time she was in town. One day, I’d like to make you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever tasted, she thought. Alicia hopped onto the edge of the kitchen counter, wrapping her thick legs around his waist, feeling his downy-soft scruff across her cheek.
“I think I’ll move to Savannah and open a bed and breakfast. For women who need a fresh start,” she said. “Maybe you could go back to school, have more options.”
He was already heading back to the living room for a day of gaming. “Do you think ants can have caffeine?” she yelled after him, watching a procession of black specks march toward the cracked coffee beans on the floor. Through the window, she noticed uprooted trees and her car’s smashed windshield.
Alicia’s phone vibrated, the screen briefly illuminated by her husband’s name. He asked if she’d made it to her mother’s house safely during the storm.
“I did,” she whispered, mostly to herself, feeling a lump form in her throat. “We’re fine. Just fine.” She placed her phone on the counter, opened the kitchen door, and followed the line of ants into the wreckage.
Ashley McCurry
Ashley McCurry (she/her) is a contributing editor for Cream Scene Carnival and staff reader for Okay Donkey literary magazine. Her most recent work appears in Sky Island Journal, Five Minutes, Heimat Review, and Flash Flood Journal. Her work recently received an Honorable Mention award in the Scribes Prize microfiction competition, with additional stories longlisted in the 2023 Bath Flash Fiction and Brilliant Flash Fiction writing contests.
January 2024 | fiction
By the time I realized why this sublet was so cheap, it was too late—I was being tortured by the Inquisition. In case you were wondering, it was nothing like the Monty Python skit. How awesome would that have been? Well, it doesn’t help that I started giggling when they told me to, “Confess the heinous sin of heresy.” Oh God, hah! Oh, hah, huh. Hmm, sorry, can’t help it, makes me snort every time I remember that bit. But yes, my burns are still healing. Dear God, who knew screaming into a small transponder would cause so much hullabaloo. I forget how touchy the early Spanish empire could be.
I mean, I grew up Catholic, for Christ’s sake, but I never had to learn Latin, thank you, Vatican II. So when they asked me to prove my religion by reciting a few prayers, I busted out what I thought as “Profession of Faith,” but these guys thought I was spouting heresy because I was speaking modern Spanish. I did forget my Babelfish, which may have saved my ass. Wait – is it even programmed for medieval Latin? Well, lessons have been learned, that is all I have to say.
And here they are:
(1.) Double-check that your sublet to Andalusia’s Golden Era is for BEFORE 1478.
(2.) Remember to look at the profile of the person you are subletting from to make sure they aren’t a bored, rich sadist who wants to watch you suffer a bit AND pay for the “pleasure” of it.
(3.) Always, and I mean always, remember your Babelfish. Modern languages are always a tip-off and can mess with history. Ah shit, did I just change history? Has my guest rating gone down? Thank God for the fixed term on the sublet and automatic return to our time period. Not sure how the empty shackles will be explained to the Inquisitors. Hold on, I am quickly checking Spanish history on the network to see if anything has changed dramatically. Hold please. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!
Which leads me to
(4.) Always do a thorough research of the current understanding of the history of your destination and write that shit down or copy it somewhere where it cannot be altered in order to do a thorough comparison afterward.
And if all else fails,
(5.) See if there is a cheap ticket back to the immediate past to prevent yourself from buying the sublet in the first place.
Heather Bourbeau
Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman Magazine Flash Fiction winner and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin. Her latest poetry collection Monarch is a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from the US West she was raised in (Cornerstone Press, 2023).
October 2023 | fiction
A cracked skull the constables told me, must have happened when I hit the flagstone walkway. And the bruises, obviously caused by my convulsions. There was no doubt in their minds that I had succumbed to a fit of hysteria, which was perfectly understandable considering the recent spate of molestations in area. The dark stains on my bodice they attributed to a bloody nose, a matter of a weak constitution to be sure. They weren’t concerned about the volume of blood and didn’t seem to notice that there wasn’t any of it around my nostrils. They also didn’t seem to notice the rumpled grass at the edge of the walkway—or that it continued to the garden.
It was an uncivil hour, and he made quite a racket banging on the front gate and yelling that the beast had been seen prowling the lane. He said he followed its curious spring-heeled footprints to our garden wall where they simply stopped, as if it had leaped straight up into the air and over the top. If I could just spare a candle, he could continue the hunt.
From what I could see of him, he wore a long, dark cloak and carried a bullseye lantern that was spent. As I opened the gate, I offered a candle fetched from the kitchen—but instead of accepting it, he threw off his cloak with a sudden jerk revealing a devilish visage and claws that glinted in the moonlight as if made of metal.
He seemed surprised that I didn’t immediately faint at the sight of him or run as he belched out a gout of blue-white flame and clawed at me. He seemed equally surprised at what else I had brought from the kitchen—and at just how much blood a dinner knife could draw.
I wonder if, after I rolled his body off me and began dragging it to the garden, the thought crossed his mind that I might have been expecting him.
Francesco Levato
Francesco Levato is a poet, professor, and writer of speculative fiction. Recent books include SCARLET; Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; and Elegy for Dead Languages. Recent speculative fiction appears in Savage Planets, Sci-Fi Shorts, and Tales to Terrify. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a Ph.D. in English Studies, and is an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos.
October 2023 | fiction
La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico, Thursday, July 11, 1991
10:50 am
I am writing in a thatched hut a half mile down the beach from the village. The surf crashes on the shore.
Supplies
2 jugs agua pura
2 cameras
Tortillas
1 can chicken meat which tastes like dog food
1 can Vienna sausage which IS dog food
2 granola bars
1 can Herdez salsa
We have traveled here from Lubbock to witness the greatest full eclipse in decades, using an Eclipse Monitoring Station fashioned from a Johnnie Walker box with a hole cut in it. The hole is covered with foil from a cigarette pack, with a smaller hole poked via a safety pin in the foil. It’s a Camera Obscura, a pinhole camera. Jimbo read about this design someplace. He is a friend from high school and has joined as a Mission Specialist. He wears a straw cowboy hat and a red Speedo. He has a portly frame.
11:00 am
We have not pinpointed what time El Eclipse will begin, having heard many different accounts. Mission Specialist Jimbo was supposed to be on this. One local said it would not occur here in this part of Mexico at all. We discounted his opinion immediately.
The man told us this last night as we sat at a table on the dirt street in front of a little store lit by a bare bulb. A large man with a cleaver, shirt open, was chopping pork on a board, then frying it in a pan over a propane flame.
“El carne?” I said.
“Si, es porco. Taquitos.”
“Dos, por favor,” I said.
He fried the chopped pork and scooped it onto two steamed tortillas.
“Frijoles?” I asked.
He handed me a Tupperware bowl with cold beans floating in it. The taquitos were mas fina. I considered my potential disablement from the mission after consuming the frijoles.
12:45 pm
A hen with six chicks has disappeared from around the shack behind us. El Eclipse underway.
12:55 pm
Eating Herdez salsa out of a can. Smoking a cigarette, peering into Camera Obscura. The earth-rending blackness we expected has not yet materialized.
1:18pm
Sort of like a cloudy day at the beach.
1:30pm
The sky seems to be lightening up. A rooster crows behind us. I believe El Eclipse is over. Jimbo reports that the whole universe has now changed and that his fillings hurt while the spectacle was underway.
A long moment of silence, as the surf crashes.
“Mine, too.” I replied.
Conclusions
The next night, drinking pulque at Hermana Hortensia in Mexico City, Jimbo and I found an English-language newspaper, showing the path of El Eclipse.
We were several hundred miles off course, far from the dark zone, figuring that the moon was really big and would black out the whole country. As the mildly hallucinogenic pulque kicked in, we closed the mission, agreeing we are clueless specks of sand on the beach.
David Fowler
David Fowler has lived in New York, San Francisco, and on a ranch near Penelope, TX. He writes from journals kept during his travels and lives in Jackson, MS. This is his first published fiction.
October 2023 | fiction, Pushcart nominee
Even before the car turned into their driveway, Wilma and Edgar could see they had visitors.
“Is that what I think it is?” Edgar said to his wife of forty years.
“I believe so,” she answered.
“Oh, well.” He peered out at two small goats. They had taken over the small porch—one nibbled at the leg of Wilma’s rocker, the other rubbed its backside against a porch post.
“That post is loose,” Edgar said.
“Aren’t you going to park?” Wilma asked.
“Reckon so.” Edgar removed his foot from the brake. He stopped shy of the carport, not wanting to lose sight of the goats.
Locked in her own stupor, Wilma was thinking of all the times she’d asked Edgar to screen in the porch. Her concern had been mosquitos that kept her from enjoying late afternoons outside.
She looked at the largest of the goats—the one with a clump of hair hanging from its chin. An image of Edgar in his fifties leapt from her memory—he’d sworn he’d never shave the goatee. She smiled, thinking of the day he had.
She wondered, aloud, “Where did they come from.”
“Probably the goat farm down the road,” Edgar said.
“They travel that far?”
“Oh, yes, farther.” Edgar wanted Wilma to stop talking. They would have to go in to bed soon; it was already past eight. He could feel her restlessness.
“We’ll have to go in,” she said.
“Yes.”
As the couple sat in silence, the goats began prancing around. The older goat came to the very edge of the porch and looked squarely into Edgar’s eyes. The animal let out a loud, “Blleeeeaaahhh.”
Wilma flinched.
“They’re testing us,” Edgar said.
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“Now, now.” Edgar patted her left knee. Her dress had ridden up her leg. He felt the warmth of her skin beneath his hand.
She said nothing. He could feel the tension running through her.
He hoped she wasn’t recalling all his foibles. That’s what she did now. He was too distant, too independent; then other times he was too nice, too cloying. He knew she was waiting for him to get out of the car and chase the goats away. Then she could go straight to her room, get out of her travel clothes, and lie down on her bed, alone.
The goats romped some more; one hopped onto Wilma’s rocker and fell back as the chair rocked suddenly.
This made Edgar laugh. “Look at them. I wish I still had that kind of energy.”
“Blah,” his wife said.
There was something about the way Wilma said, “Blah.” Edgar could feel his hand, still on his wife’s knee. A flash of old desire nudged him, touched him deep—much as if a sexy woman had bumped against him, and he was forced to pay attention.
Edgar couldn’t understand it, but he felt young again, ready. He looked into his wife’s eyes and squeezed her knee.
“You old goat,” she replied.
Juyanne James
Juyanne James is the author of The Persimmon Trail and Other Stories (Chin Music Press, 2015) and Table Scraps and Other Essays (Resource Publishers, 2019). Her stories and essays have been published in journals such as The Louisville Review, Bayou Magazine, Eleven Eleven, Thrice, Ponder Review, and Xavier Review, and included in the anthologies New Stories from the South: 2009 (Algonquin) and Something in the Water: 20 Louisiana Stories (Portals Press, 2011). Her essay “Table Scraps” was a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2014. She lives and teaches in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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