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
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 | nonfiction, Pushcart nominee
Although I’m not particularly fond of violence, I decided to watch the TV miniseries “World without End.” It’s a Medieval butchery, maybe along the lines of “Game of Thrones,” which I haven’t seen.
Anyway, I watched the first hour of this curious pastiche of 21st century sensitivities dressed up in 14th century primitivism. In that hour, I saw a man get his forearm chopped off with a meat cleaver; a man get both legs broken with an enormous mallet; a pilloried man getting dung thrown at his head, apparently all day; and two hangings, one of which included about 15 victims, all of whom were simultaneously thrown off a bridge, necks ennoosed. There were also three graphic depictions of coitus, only one of which was consensual.
I stopped watching just before the first burning of a witch. My god, who are we to make such inhumanity profitable?
Richard LeBlond
Richard LeBlond is the author of Homesick for Nowhere, a collection of essays that won an EastOver Press Nonfiction Prize in 2022 and was a finalist for general nonfiction in the Spring 2023 San Francisco Book Festival. His essays and photographs have appeared in many U.S. and international journals, including Montreal Review, Weber – The Contemporary West, Concis, Lowestoft Chronicle, Trampset, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. His work has been nominated for “Best American Travel Writing” and “Best of the Net.”
