April 2012 | back-issues, fiction
I’d Rather Die
by Kim Farleigh
Enrique Ponce had been hit by the first bull, a blood-stained, white bandage wrapped tight around his right thigh, his awkward short steps placing despairing lights in his eyes. There was a white tear in his pants over his left hip and red patches smeared over his legs. “I’m going back out there,” he had told them in the infirmary. “Are you sure about this?” he was asked. “Of course!” So he was limping towards his second bull, each step like being barefoot on boiling sand, the crowd roaring with admiration. You’re mine, bull, Ponce thought. One horn can’t stop me. I’d rather die than be stopped by one horn. And the ring blurred, the sharpening bull now exquisitely in focus, man and bull uniting, the sword protruding out of the bull’s back, its legs folding, bucket-load spurts of stringy red shooting from its mouth, Ponce collapsing, the crowd roaring, men running to pick Ponce up, carrying him to the infirmary, Ponce wincing: “Now you can plug up the holes.”
April 2012 | back-issues, fiction
by Abigail Robertson
She talked of working in the factories, riveting metal to metal, the amount of manicures it took to right the calluses. She said it was like sewing together planes. She asked what the war was like. I wanted to say it was like sewing body to body, trying to hold the world together…I told her people saw worse than me. She frowned. I was not a war hero with medals pinned to my chest. I was a man with neatly parted hair who drank too much, coffee and the other stuff. I could not be riveted back together. This was not a callous that could be buffered away. She toyed with perfect pin curls and commented, with a pink pursed frown, about the rain. I remembered the rain, shiny on the fogged glass of my watch. The hands ticking, obscured by mud. Time was obscured by mud and tin can meals and the cold of the trench. Her nails were a familiar red. She fussed with a stray thread on my shirt, flashes of ruby against the forest green. The forest was darker, greener. Threads didn’t stand out in forests. She smiled rows of perfect white teeth. I remember sand and an ocean and foam that bubbled bodies, shoving them against the shore. A cemetery. She asked if St. Laurent would be warm this time of year.
January 2012 | back-issues, fiction
By D. Trunick
Eyes wide, legs quivering, sweat glistening, she feels ready to heave. The thick dusty red curtain brushes against her hands but provides no relief. “Why can’t I do this?” rolls from her dry parched lips. Panic and desperation enter her heart like a flash flood. She longingly watches from the side. Her conflicted soul jolts alive with the increasing brilliance of the lights above. Never stepping into view, her shadow begins to spin and sway to the music. Behind the curtain she stands dreaming of the day she too will be the one in the spotlight.
January 2012 | back-issues, fiction
By Sara Shah
And so She was created from the dust, She who was Beauty, Compassion, and Love. The Creator placed her under the foliage of the dark forest, with an abundance of berries and seeds. She lived, alone.
The Creator viewed her solitary state with sadness and sent beasts of the forest to accompany her. The beasts, although friendly, were not the proper companions to such a creature as She. However, the Creator quickly formed a new thought. The Creator impelled She’s eyes to close, and She’s being to fall into the state of Dream. While She surrendered to this new and peaceful state, the Creator took from her being and created a companion for She. For the Creator, with knowledge of everything in the sphere of all that is and has been, created.
From She, came He.
Slowly She opened her eyes and viewed the new creature beside her. He was so much like her; He did not look like any of the beasts from the depths of the dark forest. He who was Strength, Security, and Companionship, He was hers. She caressed his head and felt only love. He opened his eyes carefully, for the light of the forest was powerful, and his young eyes were not accustomed to such brightness. He looked into She’s eyes deeply and across his lips formed a sign of happiness. She could not help but notice his beauty, so like hers. She took He by the hand and showed him the ways of the dark forest, She fed him berries, She introduced him to the beasts, and She warned him of the forbidden fruit…
October 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Pavelle Wesser
I enter the elevator, watching the blinking red lights as I descend to lower level number nine, where I exit to face my interviewer. His gaze is so fathomless it fills me with a coldness that is absolute in its sense of…
“Zero,” he informs me, “is the sum total of your life, yet I believe that everyone has the right to calculate his or her own loss.”
He points me toward a cubicle, empty but for a desk, chair and adding machine. I sit and begin tapping out senseless strings of numbers. I look up hours later, as a shadow falls across my desk.
“Who’s there?” I ask.
“Please be advised that tomorrow has been eliminated by default,” a voice echoes from an undetermined location. Just then, the adding machine screen goes blank, and I yell.
“The sum total is zero.”
This hardly matters, I realize, as the past has washed away, the future will never and the now is not happening. I consider the elements of zero even as my mind goes blank and there is no longer anything, not even this.
October 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Gina Douglas
My maternal grandmother and my father both told related stories about me when I was a child first learning to talk. I don’t think my Baba and my dad ever heard the other one’s story, nor did they ever put their stories together into the real story.
My ol’ man used to proudly tell about the first two-word combination I put together. He thought it was real clever. We were in the grocery store, I was seated in the buggy. I pointed at what I wanted and said the words. The item was animal crackers, the kind that used to come in a small rectangular box, with pictures of circus animals in cages on the side of the box; and a piece of rope to make a carrying handle. I referred to this as a “cookie-purse”.
On the Jewish side of my family, Baba used to tell how she was too clever by half. I liked animal crackers, but the little boxes from the drug store across the street were not a good value; compared to buying a big bag of the same brand animal crackers at the grocery store. But kids will do the darndest things, and when she offered me a plate of animal crackers from the big bag, I wouldn’t eat them. Go figure?
They never put their stories together and realized that, in regards to the cookie-purse, I didn’t care about the cookies, I wanted the purse.
