July 2023 | fiction
She was flying in her dream, flying through the sacred sky, when she tumbled through the clouds and landed in a heap of rubble upon the earth. Then she knew she was no longer dreaming because someone trampled on top of her trying to get somewhere else. She tried to move, but her legs were pinned down, her foot twisted in a hideous manner on the other side of a slab. Thunder clapped inside her head. She tried to call out, but her mouth was gasping on the stones next to her and beside that lay her tiny, battered heart shining in the moon’s light. Suddenly it struck her: she was dead. She could see pieces of herself all about.
Yet instead of being horrified by this, she felt a surprising warmth inside. She was flowing. Not down the dusty road and towards the sea, but up towards the heavens where her dream had been. In that very moment she was turning into light, her spirit expanding. She had risen and others had risen too, all of them ascending, weightless. They had begun again.
The village lay scattered far below, the people who had survived were shouting and throwing their hands wildly about, everyone looking for all the things they’d ever loved that had been taken away. She could not see this or even hear it, but she sensed it. All things came back to what they were.
It was market day, but she would never be going again with her mother and sister to buy the apricots and figs or the fresh anchovies from the smiling fishmonger. She would never sip sweet boza sprinkled with bits of shaved cinnamon bark or chase her sister through the silvern almond grove. La-le! La-le! – she could hear someone calling, the syllables of her name hanging crystalline in the icy air.
And it had all happened because of that evening years ago when the contractors had made their hidden agreement: more sand than cement. Who would even know? They exchanged incredulous looks as they imagined a new car, gold watches, trips to the resort by the sea. What was so wrong with wanting such things? What would ever happen? Nothing, not for a thousand years.
For the children of Turkey.
Donna Obeid
Donna Obeid’s work appears most recently in The Baltimore Review, Carve, Flash Fiction Magazine, Hawai`i Pacific Review, South 85 Journal, and Waterwheel Review; she was a finalist for the Julia Peterkin Literary Award and Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Palo Alto, California. Read more at: www.donnaobeid.com.
July 2023 | fiction
Whenever Steve smoked on the patio, his son Robin would sit on the back doorstep and talk. The cutest Pokémon, the weirdest YouTuber, how he’d like to fly south for the winter like a bird, how he liked art but was rubbish at it. Robin’s thoughts chugged out of him every day. Steve scratched his long beard and listened, not expecting to respond.
Robin had started joining Steve for his smokes since Helen had left them for Spain with Dave from her office. She’d told Robin she would come back for him. Steve knew she wouldn’t. He didn’t know how he felt about that. Parenting Robin hadn’t produced the Hallmark card bond he’d anticipated. It was busier and louder, and Robin didn’t always seem to hear him. His teacher had mentioned some red flags to Helen, but Steve didn’t remember the terminology and acronyms, and the teacher had avoided Steve since Helen had left.
Steve soon realised he hadn’t emptied the ashtray in months, but there were no butts. Polishing his glasses on the bottom of his shirt, he wondered whether birds had eaten them, but Google said birds didn’t eat fag ends. Then he noticed the smell in Robin’s room. Steve planned what he would say. I’m not angry you smoked, just disappointed. It’s bad for your health. I’ve not set a good example. I’ll quit.
Steve sat on Robin’s bed, the mattress chirruping as Robin bounced. After Steve had said his piece, Robin reached under his bed. Stuck to a sheet of A3 card was Pikachu, butts cut to points for ears. YouTube was spelled out in yellowed ends. White shreds of cigarette paper were torn into feathery wings, a fresh orange butt for a beak.
‘All the things you love,’ Steve said.
In the corner, he spotted a man’s face drawn in biro, large specs around bulbous eyes. Ashy tips formed his long beard around an open smile.
Rebecca Klassen
Rebecca Klassen is an editor from the Cotswolds. Her work has been featured in publications including Mslexia Best Short Fiction, The Phare, Popshot, Superlative, and The Wild Word. She has won the London Independent Story Prize for flash and was shortlisted for the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. Rebecca has performed her work at Stroud Book Festival and Cheltenham Literature Festival.
July 2023 | fiction
Her wish came true.
From then on, she always had in her pocket the exact amount of money she wanted. She bought a house, an SUV, thousands of computers for underprivileged girls, a guided tour around the world, a private jet, a horse, alexandrite.
Until that fateful day. Her dress had no pockets.
Kaisha A. Girard
Kaisha A. Girard is a graduate of Saint Leo University pursuing her Master’s in English & Creative Writing through SNHU. Her publication credits include, among others, Sandhill Review, Dots Publications, and Ember Chasm Review where her work was nominated for 2021 Best of the Net. A native Rhode Islander and proofreader for Wild Roof Journal, Kaisha hopes that her love of editing the world will someday blossom into a proofreading career.
July 2023 | fiction
“Momma, where’s Mamaw?”
“I think she’s out in the yard somewhere.”
Regina Woody opened the back screen door and called out, “Mamaw! Mamaw are you out here? Then she spotted the old lady down along the fence standing very quiet and still. She was watching something. Regina Woody walked down past the peach trees to where her grandmother stood. “What you doing?” she whispered.
“Look Honey,” said the old lady.
“What?”
“It’s the Little Yellows. See? The Little Yellows are out.” She pointed to the honeysuckle growing along the fence. There were eight or ten small yellow butterflies fluttering above the green leaves in the morning sun. See how the dance,” said the old lady, “Like darting yellow petals. They are another of the Lords simple gifts.”
The small yellow insects flittered like tiny dancing marionettes in the bright sunshine. It was as if they moved in time to some sweet melody that only they could hear. But the old lady must have heard it too.
“They’re beautiful,” said Regina Woody standing very still beside of her grandmother.
“When I was a little girl just about your age my momma made me a Sunday dress out of material with Little Yellows on it. Oh, how I loved that dress. Momma told me that they were a reminder of God’s love for us. They’re only here a short time. Then they’re gone again for another year.”
As Regina Woody watched the tiny butterflies it seemed to her that the world opened up around her, the clear blue sky, the distant green hills and the sweet smell of the honeysuckle there before her. It felt as if she and her grandmother were standing at the very center of the universe with the colors and shapes spinning slowly around them. Is that the gift of God, she wondered? Is that why the butterflies dance?”
James William Gardner
Author of, “DEEP AUGUST: Short Stories from the American South,” and “THE HEALING GROUND,” James William Gardner writes extensively about the contemporary southland. The writer explores aspects of southern culture often overlooked: the downtrodden, the impoverished and those marginalized by society. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Gardner is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and lives in Roanoke, Virginia. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Deep South Magazine, Newfound Journal and The Virginia Literary Journal.
July 2023 | fiction
A young woman lies, shining, on a chaise by a pool. She tilts her head forward. This flattens the neck, turns it into a lovely puddle of brown butter. She examines her midriff.
At the same moment, a man passes. He is old enough to remember fresh footage of ayatollah-freed hostages. To remember their peculiar mix of weak and exulting. He has witnessed it since: an old dog caught in the rain and finally home sneezing, grandfathers at piano recitals.
He sees the woman arrayed, shining. He says to himself, Give me a weekend. I’d glaze that flat stomach Saturday night and Sunday morning I’d ruin it from the inside. He does not say this to her. He says to her, Good morning.
She does not notice the man until she hears him. She is young enough that she is comprehensively unsure of things. Where she should and/or will put her arms while lying down. What she could ever possibly do, possibly, to justify the sluice of self that runs through her head, that puts her ridiculously at the hub of the world. Her year in a children’s hospital did not change this. Losing her mother to the same bone cancer two-and-a-half years later did not change this. Nor the genes that stole from the family an implausibility to rage against. She is young enough that each thing is more different from the last thing than the same.
She says to the man, Good morning.
What she says to herself, in the meanwhile, is what she’s been thinking, and the words, were she to speak them aloud, would hardly devastate the man, though they should wound him deeper by multiples than his would her, even were he to stop smartly at the foot of the chaise and divulge the reason for his staring. The roach next to Descartes’ shoe crouched and crouched and still could not wonder after existence, and this man cannot begin to comprehend his pitifulness. For this man, a man pretending not to stare and staring, there is no change, there are tax rates and sensation, and the future is over. On the other hand, as he is not a roach altogether, hearing the thing might remind him he could never hope for such a thing.
To herself, as she watches her own skin blip out pearls of minute perspiration, she says, Soon I’ll be who I really am. Soon I will be who I really am. She says these things to herself, thought and not speech, but two thoughts, no mistake, and not because she does not want to be who she is, but because she is merely sure, freed from uncertainty by a curious mix of cowed and exulting, that who she’ll be will be more different from the last her than the same, as sure as the beads of sweat there, fat and quivering, tiny curving windows into a hazy future, right here, which is why we’re staring.
George Choundas
George Choundas is a Cuban- and Greek-American and a former FBI agent with work in over seventy-five publications, including The Best Small Fictions, Boulevard, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Santa Monica Review, and The Southern Review. His debut story collection, The Making Sense of Things (FC2 2018), was awarded the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, as well as shortlisted for the Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose, the St. Lawrence Book Award for Fiction, and the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. His debut essay collection, Until All You See Is Sky (EastOver Press 2023), was awarded the EastOver Prize for Nonfiction.
April 2023 | Best of Net nominee, fiction
A crack of thunder jolted Sarah from a dream as lightning flared, casting shadows on the bedroom walls. She blinked. A fleeting thought: secure the unfurled patio umbrella and outdoor cushions, or the storm would ruin morning brunch with her parents. Beside her, Nick snored. She slipped out of bed and left the bedroom. After living with her family in the two-story colonial for over twenty years, she navigated by the storm’s light with confidence.
She descended the stairs, her bare feet sure-footed on the carpeted steps, her hand gliding lightly on the staircase rail, smooth from years of Murphy’s Oil Soap buffing. Rain pelted on the roof while the wind howled through a downstairs open window. Quickening her pace, a series of lightning bursts illuminated a view of the kitchen below.
Flash.
At the counter, a side view of Powell, her nineteen-year-old son, naked. When was the last time she had seen him naked? He stood hunched behind a nude woman, her bent torso sprawled face-down on the kitchen island, his flesh pressed against hers, his large, bony hands gripping her hips. The freckled pallor of his skin contrasted against Serita’s complexion as he banged her from behind, his face contorted, eyes closed.
Flash.
Long dark hair cascaded across pale granite swallowing Serita’s face. She panted the softest of moans. Waifish arms extended beyond her locks. Serita’s fingers gripped the opposite edge of the counter. Silver nail polish shimmered. Was metallic in fashion?
Flash.
Powell uttered a low cry, squeezed a final release as his eyelids fluttered. A tympani drum of thunder rolled. Sarah’s hand broke from the railing to cover her mouth. She stopped herself from gasping, but she was unable to stop the downward, automatic motion of her feet, and when her eyes connected with her son’s, she stumbled, tumbling down the last steps.
Julia Poole
Julia Poole is a writer and former speech-language therapist who worked with a variety of patients, including incarcerated youth. Her writing has appeared in The Sheepshead Review, Hypertext Magazine, and Dunes Review, among other publications. She’s received a Pushcart Prize nomination. A Midwesterner at heart, she has lived on both coasts but prefers the wooded tranquility of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
