by Evalyn Lee
It was like having a stream of people mooning her, looking out the window as the train traveled down to Washington, D.C. This was the close-up asshole view of America: the graffitied walls, all the warehouse depots with their empty ledges, the broken glass, the broken pots, and always the dying, grubby grass on the ground beside the train tracks.
Deborah lifted up her iPhone 4s and took a picture.
Then she updated her status to “Single.” Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Nicholas Lepre
I was staring at nothing, sitting in the corner of Lickity Splits, waiting for Dougie to close up, when the sea creatures came in. A beluga whale in cutoffs and a little lobster girl in red ski gloves. I’d never seen a beluga look so miserable. This was a Tuesday night, almost ten o’clock. No one had been in for an hour, just Dougie and me, killing time. I was eating my third mint chip cone because I had spotted Dougie a dime earlier that week. Lobster girl had this look on her face like she was exhausted but didn’t want to go to bed. Nine years old, probably. The whale was in a big hurry and kept snapping at her. Fine by me. All I wanted was to close up, pick up a couple Bell Beefers and watch NOVA in Dougie’s basement. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Martha Clarkson
I’m sitting in a swivel seated task chair with no wheels, waiting to discuss my transfer (and promotion) to Category 5 Light Investigations. I believe the chair is circa 1960. It is September, and the leaves outside are oranging. It is my season of conflict – the beauty of the colors, the inevitable gloomy harbinger of winter.
“What did you do all summer?” my boss asks. He runs his life by the school system, behaving like a fall teacher, even though I’ve been working all summer. He never starts a conversation with the meeting’s reason.
“Umm, well, I drove with the windows down,” I say, straightening my posture, “to lash out at the hermetically sealed world we live in.” I sidelong glance the inoperable windows of our office.
“Well, surely you must’ve done something more than that,” he says, slightly accusatory in tone. “I mean, where did you go in the car with those windows down, you know, on vacation, or to a swimming hole?” Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Kate LaDew
She sees things. Little men in little top hats riding little horses with Abraham Lincoln beards. The little men and the little horses. She’s thought about telling someone but how can she with her brother the way he is: seeing dead babies and rat infested corpses and Jesus dissolving on a cross. It would be like making a joke about dead babies or corpses or Jesus. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Sati Benes Chock
She kept the T.V.
At first Jane thought that it wouldn’t be right, even though, if pressed, she didn’t feel that it was exactly wrong, either. But still. He had a wife. This hadn’t stopped her from having dinner with him, after she’d tutored his children for ten dollars an hour at his immaculate 1950s-style ranch house. The only thing out of place was a crumpled handmade quilt on the leather couch in the den. “That’s where Daddy sleeps,” whispered his son, Nate, a shy eleven-year old with spiky red hair and thick black glasses. A thrill shot through Jane, even as she pretended nonchalance. His older sister, Amanda, peered around the corner and frowned. “What are you doing in there?” she asked. It was as if she knew Jane was snooping. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 