by Jean-Luke Swanepoel
When I was five and fretful, my uncle was the kindest man I knew. Until I watched him run over a dead raccoon on that road to the mall on the outskirts of town. During summer it was a road through a field of green stalks, but it was winter and the fields were barren. He swerved firmly to make contact with the pile of blood and bones which passed like a hiccup beneath the wheels.
Filed under Fiction
Filed under Fiction
by S. Holt
Aunt Fran had called with my mother’s death announcement. She was barely intelligible, blubbering into her phone, her tears probably clogging the buttons and ports. “She ran the car in the garage,” she sobbed. “Nothing they could do, just kept her on life support until last night.” She swallowed, collected herself. “They think your father really did take her in right away. Tried CPR. Which almost makes it harder to take.”
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by Fabiana Martínez
If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.
Plato, Phaedrus, 274c-275 b, Reginald Hackforth, transl., 1952.
“You will have to sign page four and make three copies. One for us, one for you and… I’m confident they will require one at the funeral home, Sir,” the big blonde hospital administrator with one missing fake nail pronounced matter-of-factly. Continue reading
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by Daniel Webre
The dreams were never the scary part. It was Allison’s interpretations. Even these weren’t terrifying in a conventional manner. It’s just that Allison’s mind could make connections no one else would ever think of, and though most of these made no sense, once they were in her head, she’d become so convinced of their reality that a part of me was never quite sure anymore.
Let me give you an example. Once I dreamt of my cousin Fred. Fred and I were picking pineapples with a machete, reaching carefully inside the palm fronds and cutting just below the ripe fruit. I had not seen Fred since my childhood, and this was a grown man with a Hemingway beard. But in my dream I knew the man was Fred in the same way you can tell in the movies when time passes and someone has aged and maybe isn’t even played by the same actor. This was Fred all right, and the thing was, even though we were out in the tropical heat and there were a lot of these pineapples to harvest, we were having a wonderful time. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 