FICTION Issue #14
Hermit Crabs by Elissa Malcohn
Mandy gazed at blurred roadside daffodils as Noah floored the accelerator of her father’s car. For someone intent on killing them both, he kept amazing control of the wheel. He wanted to do this right. Her lips ticked upward into a brief smile.
She leaned back into a forest green leather bucket seat and breathed deeply. Early spring snow had clung to her boots as she climbed into the metallic sedan; now it melted and puddled on a plush floor mat. Noah’s sneakers were second-hand and worn. Mandy wondered idly whether his feet were wet.
Waiting at the Window by Ezrebet Yellowboy
Every so often, Alma peers out of her window. She does this by plucking the heavy curtains aside, pinching the fabric between her forefinger and thumb and edging it over just a hair. She hears a noise and rises, creaking, from her rocker, or has a suspicion that something or someone is creeping around her house, and she feels almost forced to acknowledge the existence of the beyond by peeking at it in this manner.
A construction worker in a sweaty t-shirt sits at the counter of his favorite diner and chats with the skinny waitress who refills his coffee. Two seats down, a young man with large sideburns listens in on the conversation. The young man’s fingers are poised above the keyboard of the laptop in front of him; he is waiting to take notes. The construction worker and the waitress are speaking of the price of gasoline. And flirting. Neither one notices the eavesdropper.
“It’s expensive,” says the waitress. “Too expensive.” She tucks her recently highlighted hair behind her ear and smiles in a way that her former boyfriend found fetching.
“It is,” the construction worker agrees. He eyes the skinny waitress’s breasts and wonders if she has a boyfriend. “Too damn expensive.”
The Last Tiger by Tracie McBride
Hunger has made you reckless. You track the sound of human voices through the woods until you find a man and a woman. They are shouting at each other. The woman slaps the man’s face. He presses his hand to his cheek for a moment, and then lunges at the woman, knocking her to the ground. He squeezes his hands tight about her throat. The noises she makes are ugly.
Your nostrils flare. You smell food. It is in the pack on the man’s back. You come closer to the couple, deliberately snapping a twig underfoot. The man whirls around, almost losing his grip on the woman.
You point at the back pack.
"Food," you say.
The Artificial Sunlight of Memory by D. E. Wadsen
At one time or another, my street housed five Dalis, a pair of Goyas, two Van Goghs, a Picasso, and a Matisse. Our manufacturers, Yakov, partnered Picasso and Matisse together, and they lived two doors down from each another in Studio City. The Picasso departed by the end of my third year.
Once Picasso went on holiday to Luna for a refit, Yakov coupled Matisse and I, since I had been without a support Nandroid since my arrival. Unlike Picasso, I did not enter the realm of ‘Meebly Meep,’ a syndrome defined by inflicting one’s charge and owners with random utterances such as ‘meebly,’ ‘meep,’ and ‘meeblymeepmeep.’ The beeps of insanity.
Then again, I always liked Maddie, especially the way her twin pig-tails bobbled when she was happy.
Recipe for Survival by Sandra Mcdonald
Brewis is a traditional dish from Newfoundland. It’s pronounced just like one of the black-and-blue marks your father’s grip has left on your arm and when properly prepared comes out as a thick, fishy mush. Your grandfather usually cooks it but on this fine summer day you’re fixing it alone for the first time and want to make sure it comes out exactly right.
First you break apart the hard biscuits (also called hard tack) that Grandpa’s sister sends down now and then from St. John’s. Soak them overnight in a large pan of cold water. Do not use the pan that Grandpa uses to soak his calluses and corns. Do not use soft biscuits that you can buy locally. Hard biscuits are made with wheat flour and water but no leavening agent, and on sailing ships of yore, when your kind would come to slaughter my kind, they could last for entire voyages without spoiling. Try to eat one without softening it first and you’ll break all your teeth.
Sashenka Redux by Jennifer Pelland
Sashenka desperately wanted to live.
At least, this copy of her did.
A quiet ping issued from her tablet and Sashenka’s stomach contracted into a tight knot. Not again. She should have been used to it by now.
Maybe there were some things that couldn’t be gotten used to.
“Aren’t you going to look?”
“Shut up.”
“Not at all curious?”
“Shut up.”
“You know you want to.”
She resisted the urge to groan. That would only encourage her. “It’s another dead Sashenka. Does it really matter why?”
“Of course it does.”
“She’s dead. That’s all that matters.”
“Oh, admit it—you want to know as badly as I do.”
“You’re not real.”
“So?”
Your Blood by Leslie Claire Walker
Inches of dust on the countertop. Motes floating in the Saturday afternoon sunlight that streamed red, violet, and green through the stained-glass window. Tom didn’t know what the hell he and Julie were doing, breaking up in a magic shop.
“There’s nothing left to talk about,” Julie said. She gripped the shelves beside her so tight her knuckles bled white. And the statuary shook precariously.
“You break it, you buy it,” the shop owner said from her place behind the counter. The end of her long, brown braid swung at her hips. The sleeves of her green cable-knit sweater hung past her fingertips.
No Bubblewrap for Little Guys by Sara Saab
I chased a little boy through the city.
We did not run in a straight line past districts of the city’s prim neighbourhoods and manicured squares; instead we traced a tight ellipse through the market and a pastel street, etched like scarring, demarcating the end of outdoor wares and gentle wind perfumed with spice. I rolled down that street, my knees and the tired gravel suffering at the behest of gravity and mutely commiserating. The five-year-old boy sprinted ahead of me. He was possessed by the fright I’d given him, nebulous and impossibly fast.
The market tried to shoo away our cat-and-mousing, procuring the corporal punishments of shoppers’ bony shoulders and bike stands against my shins and a stray mango to split wetly under his foot, upsetting his balance. The chase went on. It had its own momentum, was outside of us. My lungs began to seep hatred for my obstinate self, and then to outright cry, big welling tears of lactic acid that dripped off the apex of each sharp respiration. But I could not stop running; I had to stop him.
They told me the old widow had a sense of humor, but I didn’t believe it until she moved me to the end table.
“Nice and low, Bull,” she said, pearls swaying with the drooping folds of her neck as she adjusted me. “All the ladies will have to bend down to have a look at you.”
The old widow was, without refute, simply capital.
My third placement proved to be my final one, the spot that became my domain. Pete, the gas lamp of ivory-tinted glass that stood at my side, told me she always shuffled new acquisitions about a few times. A celadon vase had been removed to make room for me. We weren’t sure where it had gone. Rumor had it the third floor on the harpsichord.
“Good riddance,” Pete sniffed. “Total prude.”
My husband calls me a cherry-picked trade-in in the used-car lot of life, and he ought to know. He’s the Sales Manager of the Deck of Cars lot downtown, but I met him when he was a fitness consultant at my gym. He sold me on a long-term membership, reasoning when you signed up for four years, the monthly rate dropped, so it was like getting the last eight months for free. Good salesmen know how to make others feel they’re sharing something special, the same as good actors, of which I’m proud to say I’m one.
It’s after six and dusk drops like a second curtain call as I walk home from a long day of modeling lingerie. I have perfect feet and legs, so a lot of the shots are below the waist, which says no hair and makeup. A woman who’s pretending to be my sister follows me home, as she has every day since April. Technically, Clarissa is my half-sister, though, given the circumstance we’re beyond technicalities. What we share in genes we lack in life history. She was raised by a woman I haven’t seen since I was five. Clarissa, my supposed half-sister, was the chosen one and I was the one Claire gave away. I don’t let it bother me.
Perfect Tense by Lisa Mantchev
The door to my dorm room burst open and a woman strode over the industrial carpeting and grabbed me by the front of my t-shirt.
Behind her, a baby wailed and I could smell dog shit.
“Do you hear that?” she screamed. Her hair stuck out at all angles like she’d rubbed a vial of superglue through it. “THAT, my girl, is your FUTURE. Nothing but CRAP as far as the eye can see.”
As scared as I was, I sneaked a look over her shoulder. “My future?”
She nodded.
“With a baby?” My eyes got a little misty at the thought.
“Are you deaf?” she said. “That ain’t a fucking monkey!”
“Stop snivelling, Annis,” Mother hissed as we followed the butler into the drawing room. “You’ll make your face red. Myrtle, don’t grin and show your teeth.”
When Mother called Annie by her Christian name, we knew better than to protest, so I didn’t point out that Annie’s face was already red. Mother had scrubbed her with pumice-stone so her pockmarks wouldn’t show. Her eyes were red too, from crying. And I wasn’t grinning. I was trying to smile becomingly, because Mother had threatened to whip us both if we said or did anything to disgrace ourselves in front of Lord Ashbury. Lord Ashbury: titled, owner of a country estate and a London townhouse. Lord Ashbury, whose friends’ sons perched even further up the social heights than he. If we behaved, we might someday wed one of those shining beings. One slip, and Lord Ashbury would have us thrown in the poorhouse. So Mother warned us, at any rate.
“Grace and decorum, girls,” she said under her breath.