Tag Archives: Fiction

by | 10/05/2023 · 5:45 am

To Gain the World

by Robert Garner McBrearty

My teenage son says that money doesn’t matter, and on one level I get it, but if you’ve ever been short of it, you know it does.

I point out that we stay in nicer hotels now when we travel, and he admits that’s sort of pleasant, though he says, and I know it’s true, that he’d be fine staying in a hostel. In fact, he might prefer it.

We eat at better restaurants now, I tell him, and he says that is enjoyable, but he’d be fine really with just about any grub, beans from a can, maybe some tuna, and again, I know it’s true for him.

But you wouldn’t want to sleep out on the streets, right? Continue reading →

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by | 09/07/2023 · 5:31 am

Nooshin and the Forgotten Coast

by Samira Shakib-Bregeth

After she got over her second marriage, Nooshin left Georgia and drove through the Emerald Coast, where her two friends, Brit and Shahin, rent out their vacation homes all year—except for the low season in September when the hurricane season peaks—to Apalachicola, Florida. Nooshin wanted fresh oysters from Oyshack. Chris, who she met in college, wrote about the place east of Highway 30A a month before he went to Rome to find himself.

Twenty years ago, instead of marrying Chris out of college, she married his best friend, Jake, now her first ex-husband. Continue reading →

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by | 08/24/2023 · 6:25 am

Valhalla, Georgia

by Stephen Hundley

Crocodiles are easy. People are harder.
–Steve Irwin

In 2006, Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray. The Telegraph reports that he was stabbed hundreds of times by an animal roughly six-hundred-pounds and seven feet across, wing to wing. His cameraman said he passed peacefully, in shock. Continue reading →

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by | 05/01/2023 · 5:49 am

Noise and Water

by B. B. Garin

When the first swimmer disappeared, everyone blamed a shark. Even though environmentalists had been warning about decreased populations and disturbed migratory patterns. Then a paddleboarder vanished inside the sandbar. Tourists milling through Sun-Cream Gift & Dessert Shoppe speculated about freak high tides carrying a shark into the shallows off Folly Beach. No one mentioned the lack of dorsal fins spotted along the coast.

I was fiddling with the churn in a soft-serve machine when Jon brought the latest news.

“Three high school kids,” he told me, rearranging the personalized lobster keychains so they hung out of alphabetical order. “Took a canoe out on the Sandy last night. Never came home.” Continue reading →

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by | 03/23/2023 · 6:31 am

After Leaving

by Shannon McLeod

There’s a surrender and ease in being told what to do. It was something I never would have anticipated missing after leaving him.

Once I’ve settled in at the Best Western, I think of calling my sister, Astrid. I’d hate to disturb her, though. She’s recently given birth to twins. I don’t want to burden her. I’ll wait to talk until she asks me for help, I think. She may want a babysitter soon.

I decide I’ll take myself out for dinner. It’s been so many months since I’ve been out to a restaurant. Date nights dwindled after the early stage of our relationship. I suspect he didn’t feel proud of me anymore, didn’t feel I was worth showing off or spending money on. Continue reading →

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