Category: Fiction (Page 4 of 5)

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Hiding in Plain Sight

12 September 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Lucy Fox

The trouble with being a therapist is I can’t switch it off. Constantly, I’m analysing
people, trying to dissect their triggers. It makes dating difficult. I’ve found men are often on edge when they find out what I do as if over our meeting of wine and breadsticks, I’m trying to work out if they have a good relationship with their mother. So, I haven’t told Thomas.

We met on a dating app a few weeks ago. I was surprised to see him on there; he
didn’t seem like the type, but he’s exactly what I go for. We started texting, but he said he prefers to talk over the phone, so our texts turned into calls. Now, here we are, sitting opposite each other, sipping wine and sharing stories.

Over the phone, we briefly touched on the topic of work. He told me that he doesn’t work much anymore and he accepted that I didn’t want to talk about what I do either. “So, what do you do in your free time?” I ask now, leaning forward, arms uncrossed, using my body language to show how open I am to hearing him.

“I do a bit of DIY, but mostly I play golf.” He smiles, it is friendly, not leering like some men. “Are you close with your family?” He mirrors my body language.

“Oh you know, the usual story. Dad left when I was three.” My throat closes up; I take a sip of wine, savouring the bitterness of the Cabernet Sauvignon Thomas picked out for us. “I don’t know him but it’s fine. It’s been thirty years, you know? And my Mum did an amazing job of raising me and my younger brother. When you have one incredible parent, who needs a Dad?”

“Mothers are wonderful. My Mum was a fantastic woman. She stayed at home raising me, looking after my Father and the house and she liked doing it. Never complained. Women aren’t like that now.” I bristle slightly; it’s involuntary and not professional – he’s not a client, Meg – I reprimand myself, but honestly, those views! If he was my patient I would say no woman will ever live up to his Mum. Obvious Mummy issues.

Our perky waitress bounces over as I’m trying to come up with an appropriate
response, “are you guys ready to order?” She holds her pen and pad, poised. I tell her what I want, while Thomas fiddles around with his reading glasses.

“Thank goodness it’s not one of those places where you have to order on an app.”
Thomas huffs, handing the menus over. The waitress smiles and Thomas lights up, “you look just like my daughter when she was your age.”

“Oh really?” She laughs, “is this your daughter?” She turns to me and my cheeks
burn red.

“No. I’m his date.” Is that what it looks like from the outside? Like I’m having dinner
with my Dad?

“Oh I’m sorry,” she turns scarlet and runs away.

Thomas chuckles but I feel sick. I need a therapist.

Lucy Fox is an aspiring writer who likes to write from the female perspective. She will study English Literature and Creative Writing at university this September.

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The Train

1 September 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Beth Ford

Macy would always remember the day she became a train. It was the tail end of winter, and she had had enough.

The kiddie train in the city park had shuttered what felt like ages ago now. A flood of rainwater had barreled through the park, upending earth, sidewalk, and tracks. And, of course, covid now made the tiny train cars too close for comfort so they remained locked away.

Which meant here they were, with Brendan melting down alongside the mini train tracks because there was still no train. She had walked them past the loop of track on the way back to the car, not thinking it would be a problem. But after telling him twice the train was not running, he had started crying. She wasn’t even sure how he remembered the train. He couldn’t have been more than three the last time he rode it.

She tried to be understanding. Everyone had reached their boiling point by this stage of the pandemic, adults included, so who could blame a child for acting out? Though the fact remained hers was the only one making a scene in the park this morning. The tantrum reached a new level of shrillness. She had to do something.

She knelt in front of her son. “Why don’t we be the train?” she asked.

He paused his screaming long enough to look up at her. He was interested, at least.

“Here. Get on my back.” She turned so he could get piggyback, then she stood and walked alongside the tracks. She felt a tug on her shirt at the shoulder and heard a loud sniffle, which probably meant the fabric had become a tissue. She ignored it and forged ahead. “Where is the train headed today?” she asked.

“Mexico!” he shouted.

Mexico? Where did he get this stuff? “All right, the 3:10 to Mexico it is.”

“Make the train whistle, mommy!”

She had to try a few times before a convincing whistle emanated from her lips, but eventually he was satisfied.

They began to attract attention. An older couple laughed and walked by with a wave. A woman and her son watched for a moment before approaching. The boy was a bit younger than Brendan, dressed in a blue t-shirt with a robot on it.

“Want to join our train?” Brendan asked from his perch. “We’re going to Mexico.”

The boy looked up at his mother. She shrugged. “Do you mind?” she asked Macy before taking position behind. The boys shouted as they went along, lots of chuga-chugas and choo-choos, and the occasional, Faster! The group had almost returned to their starting point when a little girl fell in at the rear of their train, parent unidentified.

“We’re reaching the station,” Macy said. “You boys better put on the brakes.”

Brendan made a whooshing sound she assumed was meant to be the sound of the train slowing. Behind her, the other boy simply shouted “Stop!”

She pulled up to the same tree they had begun under and let Brendan down. A mother ran from the direction of the duck pond to claim the little girl. “Sorry!” she said. “She got away from me for a moment.”

“No worries,” Macy said. They all introduced themselves. The kids grinned, thoughts of tantrums temporarily dissipated. For a brief moment, normalcy seemed restored. The sun peeked through the leaves above them, brightening the last winter chill out of the air.

“So,” she asked, “Same time next week? Different destination perhaps?”

Beth Ford lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her short fiction, poetry, and a novel excerpt have appeared in Embark Literary Journal, The Scores, Sangam Literary Journal, fresh.ink, and The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. For more information, visit http://bethfordauthor.com.

Mutiny at the Club

26 August 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Maureen Sherbondy

At the dance club, the man’s shirt pattern peels away and bops to the tune. The red and black circles jive back and forth, shimmying to the drummer’s four-four beat. Now void of any pattern, the shirt stares with white-cotton envy at the gyrating circles.

Five other times the man had worn his fun shirt to the club, promising he would finally get out on the dance floor. But he just couldn’t work up the nerve.

Tired of words that held no meaning, the pattern calls a mutiny this night and creates their own adventure. When the man orders the circles back in their place on his torso, they roll out the door, eventually stealing away on the tires of a jazzed-up sports car.

Maureen Sherbondy‘s latest book is Lines in Opposition. She has published in Litro, Calyx, Stone Canoe, and other journals. Maureen lives in Durham, NC.

The Heritage Park War

10 August 2022 / Editor

Fiction by William Falo

You bought a house near Heritage Park, and after feeding your cat Rogue, you walked outside. There was an old man there walking a dog. He waved, and you loving animals walked over to pet the friendly dog.

“Sophie.”

“Yes?”

“I recognize you.”

“From where?”

“You lived here as a child.”

“Yes, ten years ago.”

“How is your mother?”

“Good, she moved into an assisted living place, and I bought the house from her.”

“Welcome back to Marlton and Heritage Village. Do you still have your cat?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Do you remember the war?”

“No.”

“I was there. After it happened, your mother told me what you said that you saw, and I believed her. Do you want to hear about it?”

“Yes, let’s sit on the bench.”

The cawing of the crows got so loud that you thought they were gathering right outside your window. When you looked outside, there were some in the distance, and you saw what looked like an army of cats in Heritage Park behind your house in Marlton.

“Mom, there are cats and crows in the backyard, and I think they are going to fight.”

Your mother mumbled about fever dreams. You were sick and always felt tired lately. They said it could be the flu, but you might need to be brought to the hospital if you didn’t get better. That scared you more than anything. When your mother was in the other room, you opened the window and put pieces of bread on the ledge. One crow always came and ate it. It was always the same crow because it had a damaged wing that hung down, but it could still fly.

You saw the cats coming into the park, and they walked with their heads up, for they knew no fear. Their large eyes saw everything, and their claws cut like knives. You wished there was a way to convince them to go elsewhere, but they never listened to anyone.

The crows ruled the air, but the cats were fast, and feathers floated down after some encounters. It looked like it would go on forever until the leader crow picked out a specific plant, then flew above the cats and dropped it; the cats went crazy and forgot why they were there. They couldn’t resist the catnip. Some ran off, others chased imaginary birds, while others grabbed anything they could find, curled around it, and then kicked at it with their back legs.

Eventually, they all left with a few hisses as a warning that they would be back. You
believed them. They had nine lives.

You saw a man walking a dog.

“You?”

He nodded.

“Your mother said you woke up, and the fever was gone, so you ran to the window and looked out.”

Later, you walked through the park, and the crow with the damaged wing circled above your head. You understood that she wanted you to follow her, and you did until it landed near a bush. Under the bush was a tiny kitten. It meowed and looked at you with sad eyes.

You brought the kitten home. The crow saved the kitten’s life; it would have died out there alone. Your mother was so happy that you felt better, she agreed to care for it and take it to the vet in the morning, and yes, you could keep it. It was a female, and you named it Rogue after your favorite Marvel character.

The next day, you walked through Heritage Park and thought of Rogue the kitten and how the crow saved it, which gave you hope for peace. Soon, you and Rogue were best friends.

Your eyes filled with tears, and you hugged the man.

“Please come for coffee later. I want to ask you more since my mother has dementia. I want to write it all down because I always thought it was a strange dream, and now that I have met you, it has all come true, and that is the most amazing and wonderful thing that has happened to me in a long time.”

“I’m happy I could finally tell someone.”

“Has there been another war?”

“No, but I keep watch, and now I hope you will help guard the park too.”

“I will.” You hugged him again. Above you, a crow cawed, and you wondered if it could be the one with the damaged wing. You knew you would put food out later.

You went home, and with Rogue climbing over your desk, you wrote the first line of a story nobody would believe. The war began in Heritage Park.

William Falo lives with his family, including a papillon named Dax. His stories have been published or are forthcoming in various literary journals. He can be found on Twitter @williamfalo and Instagram @william.falo.

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Field Work

1 August 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Alison Arthur

Her eyes are close-set, small, appearing to sink into the sides of her nose. “Hmm,” thinks Lilibeth. “Problematic”. Perhaps some foundation will make her nose appear narrower. That might relieve the piggy quality of her eyes. Good big ears, though. A definite plus. And, they don’t protrude overly. Her mouth is unremarkable.

Lilibeth has a theory about the size and placement of facial features and how this relates to the intelligence of a person. The larger the facial feature, the greater the intellectual capacity. And, of course, the reverse is also true. Perhaps her big ears and small eyes cancel each other out and the net result is average ability. Of course, close-set small eyes are a particularly bad sign. Difficult to say; perhaps a bit of a dim wit.

“Are you finished?” he calls from the adjoining room.

“Just a minute. Almost,” Lilibeth puts a few more dabs of contour powder on her cheeks and expertly blends. Good enough, she concludes. Ready. She closes the casket lid in preparation for transfer to the chapel.

Once the casket is in place, Lilibeth opens the lid to reveal her handiwork. Not her best, but adequate, she decides. The first mourners are arriving now, and she discretely slides into a seat in the back row as is her habit. She always attends the services of those she has prepared. She likes to listen to the eulogy to see if it validates her conclusions. Her version of field work.

Alison Arthur is a a retired Counselling Therapist living in rural Nova Scotia. She is new to flash fiction and is excited about this new adventure in her life.

Life’s a Mystery

25 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Ale Malick

My friend and I were on a barge, crossing the wide river, when the deadman’s telephone rung. He shouted spools of embarrassing self-defense into the phone, which was tiny in his chunky, rubbery hands. There was a whole world on the other end of that call which we couldn’t engage with, but to which he had much to say. Us, the people on the barge, were nothing to the great expanse of life that existed out there, somewhere, for him. The barge, packed tight with passengers as it was, meant I could smell his sweat and catch droplets of his spital. But we were not there to him.

Without a pause in his tirade, or even completing a sentence, the man threw his phone with as much power as an aging, obese, wheezing, suited man could do. We all watched it fly, then drop quickly into the muddy swollen swell. It had rained for days, and the river stood higher than it should have done.

I didn’t see him fall. I was still watching the ripples the phone had made. But my friend saw him go, though even he couldn’t say if he’d done it on purpose or if the force of throwing had toppled him. The man hit the water with much more impact than the phone had done, and he didn’t stay afloat any longer than it. We watched the spot in case he reemerged and swam to shore. But no one went to help him, it was impossible. In this current, the deadman was going to stay dead.

The excitement brought benches free, which my friend spotted, and we sat down for our sandwiches. He began to talk, which was unusual for him. The deadman’s sudden exit had inspired it I think. “I was in India once, long before we met of course. On a crowded street, waiting for something, but I can’t remember what. A crackle across the road gave me a focus. A bird had landed on the electricity lines and was being electrocuted. It fell after a couple of seconds, stiffly to the floor. A poor looking man, the poor of a poor city, walked over to him with a cup and fed the dying bird water. Touching of course, but in amongst all the poverty I’d seen, children begging, crippled and diseased bodies, dirt, dust and roaming wild dogs, he chose a bird to care for.”

The captain started shouting instructions about being ready with our bags. We were docking. Time had gone already. My friend never explained why he told his story right then, and I could never know if the deadman was killing himself or saving his phone.

I did ask him, but he only said, “Life’s a mystery.” Like he didn’t know himself why he’d said it. He hailed us a taxi and we moved on to something new.

Ale Malick has been a lecturer, playwright, actor, stand-up, elevator operator, labourer converting a Soviet army barracks into a factory. He writes for ROUTE magazine, on all things Route 66, and has been shortlisted for a HarperCollins anthology. He won an international award for his novel Pizza with Jimbob & Twoforks.

King

18 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Margaret Kelliher

Sadie opens the door. The dog stretches and his yawn evolves into a whine. Sadie and the dog head towards the dollar store where she works.

Blue and gray clouds bruise the eastern sky purply-pink. The dog walks with his ears up, tail down. Always awaiting the enemy.

Sadie had been that for him once, briefly. One winter night, the steady hum of the interstate beyond the scrub-tangled chain link fence lulled enough for Sadie to discern a melody of low growls and whimpers. She stood still and listened, her trash bag poised over the bin.

There it went again, several yards beyond the halo of her floodlight.

Sadie approached, her phone lighting the way. A medium-sized dog with mottled black, brown, and white fur paced and whimpered inside the fence. Semi-trucks rumbled down the highway just beyond.

Someone dumped you here. You think they’ll come back, Sadie thought. A twig snapped beneath her feet and the dog stiffened, his legs locking and eyes meeting Sadie’s with a growl.

No helping you, is there? Sadie backed away and went to her house. She emerged a moment later with a plastic spoon heaped generously with peanut butter. Sadie crouched low and extended the treat. The dog’s eyes darted from the fence to the spoon, then approached with his tail down.

The first night, he tore up her doormat.

You’re a real twit, she told him. She bought a bag of dog food the next morning anyway. She knew her fair share of twits from working as a cashier at the dollar store, had built up a tolerance for them. Folks who didn’t understand that tax wasn’t included in the price. Folks who couldn’t fathom that some items cost more than a dollar. Folks who didn’t bother paying at all. The manager blamed Sadie for that last bunch. As if she wasn’t already distracted explaining county taxes at the register. All of them, twits, including the manager.

All except one, a beautiful man with dark hair and pale skin who wore a black coat with its collar perpetually turned up. Otherworldly. Secretly, she called the dark-haired man her prince.

The day after she found the dog, she discovered that he knew how to pull open door levers. When Sadie left her shift that evening, the dog emerged from behind the outdoor freezer that housed jumbo bags of ice. After that, Sadie didn’t bother trying to lock the dog in the house.

I should name you, Sadie says to the dog as they walk to the store this morning. But no name comes to mind.

An older gentleman whose flannel smells like the cigarettes and the woods that stretch behind the gas station at the end of town walks up to her register. He plunks down a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a bottle of extra-strength painkillers.

Three dollars, the man in the flannel declares. He rotates his lower jaw like he’s nursing a toothache.

Sadie rings up the items and points to the green numbers on the display that read $3.51.

Three items, three dollars, the man barters. Over the man’s shoulder, Sadie can see that the dark-haired man in the black coat has entered the store.

It’s a premium whitening toothpaste, and then there’s tax, Sadie says.

The man pulls out three crumpled bills and a handful of change from his jeans pocket. Sadie smooths the bills and places them in the drawer, then bags the items and hands them to the man. The man leaves, grumbling something about government-sanctioned robbery.

Sadie cranes her neck, looking for her prince, but can’t find him.

Later that night, Sadie sits at her kitchen table, sketching the dark-haired man. She colors him in with pencils she bought with her meager employee discount at the dollar store. In the sketch, he looks over his shoulder, his eyes glinting over the upturned collar. Sadie examines her work. For someone who has only taken a handful of art classes in high school, it’s not bad. Her prince has never come to her register, so she doesn’t know what color eyes he has. She debates between the blue and green before getting up to change into her pajamas.

When she returns, the dog has snatched the blue, green, and black colored pencils and is chewing them to splinters.

You really want to end up back on the other side of that fence, don’t you? Sadie scolds the dog. He drops the pencil in his mouth and looks ashamed. At least the drawing is unharmed, she thinks, as she cleans up the mess of wood shards.

The next morning, the manager informs her that more products have gone unaccounted for. He threatens to let her go if she doesn’t catch the dollar store thief. In the very least, dock her pay. So, Sadie keeps her eyes open. Mostly she watches her prince, who turns and looks dreamily to the corners of the store, who delicately lifts items from the shelves, who angles away from her, those broad shoulders, those perfectly fitting jeans, long fingers pushing an empty shopping cart nearer to her, nearer to the door.

An empty shopping cart.

Sadie shouts. Her prince startles and bolts. The manager hears the commotion too.

The automatic doors whoosh open.

A lightning bolt of fur and claw springs from behind the ice freezer and topples Sadie’s prince to the ground. The dog’s teeth sink into the back pocket of the man’s jeans, who howls at the dog to get off. Deodorant, toothpaste, and a pack of razors all spill on the pavement from the man’s coat pockets.

Sadie calls for the dog to stop. The manager can handle it from here. The dog looks up at Sadie. Sadie looks down at the dog.

Thanks King, Sadie says.

King yawns and scratches his ear.

Margaret Kelliher lives on the south side of Chicago with her family and a cockapoo who thinks she is a big dog. She currently teaches composition and participates in the La Grange Writers Group, whom she would like to thank for helping her grow as a writer.

Sweeter Than Your Name

6 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Josephine Greenland

She can taste them as she puts the jars on the shelf. Plush blueberries, sweetened with sugar, exploding on her tongue like a thousand desserts. Her best batch yet, too good to be eaten, too good for the stale biscuits on the table. They could belong in a shop, in those shiny glass jars—gherkin jars she waited for the family to finish. Washed and scrubbed, to erase the brine residue. Polished so the glass can be used as a mirror. Labelled and dated, Blueberries by Ruth, July 1932, in a longhand rivalling her father’s.

‘Aren’t you done yet?’

Another face in the glass, battling her for room. Blonde and bright where she is red-haired and dull.

Mary, apple of father’s eye. Faultless, no matter what she does. ‘You promised you’d play with us.’

Us. Mary and the merchant’s daughter, who eats store-bought jam with a silver spoon, who makes Mary forget where she belongs. Ruth motions around her. ‘I have to clean up.’

‘Then let me taste!’

‘I’m saving the jam.’

‘Why?’

Because of the sigh of an empty purse. The smoke and liquor on father’s breath. The snatching of their savings when he wants more. The curses, the bruises. The suffering no mother should endure.

Ruth goes to the sink. ‘Because butter and cheese are running low.’ Mary’s been away too long, she wouldn’t understand why they can’t buy more. ‘And mother loves it.’

Mary’s eyes flash. ‘I bet father hates it.’ She edges up to the cupboard. ‘No one cares about your jam.’

Like a bird taking flight, she leaps and grabs two jars. Empties them out the window as Ruth rushes to pin her down. Their screams, like their bodies, twisting round each other.

And swarming over the jam outside, the ants.

Josephine Greenland is a Swedish-British writer from Eskilstuna, Sweden, with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham. Her debut novel, Embers, was published by Unbound in 2021. She has won and been shortlisted in five writing contests, and had work published in various online and print magazines.

Bees

1 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Iris J. Melton

“How many this week?” I asked.

“Three,” she answered.

“Three’s a lot. What did they say?”

She continued typing. The tap of the keys was the only sound other than the dog licking his paws under the table.

“The usual. Not the right fit for us. The selection process is so subjective. Thank you for submitting, but…”

She continued to type. “Would you mind making the coffee? I just want to finish this bit before I take a break,” she said, adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses by the earpiece.

I ground the dark, oily coffee beans and placed them in the carafe of the french press. When the water I put in the microwave began to boil, I poured it over the ground coffee. Then I collected two teacups and saucers from the cabinet. None of the teacups matched. She only used bone china teacups, never mugs. She said the coffee tasted different from a teacup. Lucy and I drank from mugs at home. But it always felt like drinking coffee was a secondary activity when I drank from a mug. I was also reading, writing, or driving. But when I drank from a teacup with a saucer, I was only drinking coffee. That was the primary activity.

“I dreamt of bees again last night,” she said as I placed the cups on the table.

“Bees?”

“You know those films where they show all the bees crawling over a big piece of honeycomb?” She pushed the press down to the bottom of the carafe slowly and then poured the coffee into my cup. It smelled of bittersweet chocolate and orange peel.

“Was it scary?”

“Scary?” She considered for a moment and pushed a loose strand of her dark hair behind her ear. Then she poured coffee into her own cup. “No, not scary. There were just…so many.” She held the cup under her nose and inhaled slowly. Then she lowered it to her lips.

“Have you been reading about bees?”

“No. Swords,” she answered.

“Swords?”

“For the book. How they’re made. The percentage of carbon to steel. How a smith forges and heats and quenches them,” she answered.

“Quenches? What’s that?”

“It’s when the sword-smith plunges the heated blade into oil or water to rapidly cool it. Part of the process,” she answered. “I like that word. Quench.” She took another sip of coffee. The teacup made a small, clinking sound as she replaced it in the saucer. “What would it mean if it were a noun. What would a quench be?”

“Oh, I don’t know…maybe a small, nocturnal mammal that eats only…honey?” I mused. I rubbed the knees of my corduroy trousers and looked at the gray afternoon sky out the window.

“Hmmm…I like that. Only honey,” she said. “How many for you this week?”

“Five,” I answered.

“Five’s a lot. Time consuming,” she said.

“What else am I doing?”

“Still, five. Five resumes, five cover letters. It’s a lot of stories. A lot of different stories.”

“Everything’s a story,” I answered.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you…I got an interesting rejection last week. It wasn’t the usual rejection letter.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“They said so. They said This is not our usual rejection letter. Then they complimented me on my writing and suggested I send them more.”

“Well, that’s encouraging, isn’t it?” I asked.

“A no dipped in honey is still a no,” she said. “Imagine if it were like the old days and I had to print everything and go to the post office.”

“That would be a lot of postage,” I said.

“Expensive…paper, ink cartridges, postage.”

“But you’d get to know the postal workers. Probably by name,” I said. “And they’d probably talk about you when they went in the back. They’d say It’s that aspiring writer again.”

“Oh, I hope they wouldn’t say that.”

“What would they say, then?” I asked.

“Writer. Just writer.”

She poured more coffee into my cup, and then refilled her own. The loose strand of hair slipped out from behind her ear.

“Don’t they die after they sting you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Bees. Don’t they die after they sting you?”

Her mouth slowly widened into a wicked looking grin. “They do,” she answered.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Just an evil thought,” she laughed. She stretched her hands on each side of her cup, with the fingers outstretched. The nail of her index finger was broken down to the quick. “I know what a quench could be…a writer in her forties who desires to be published but has not yet found a publisher. In spite of actively looking.”

“Assiduously looking, maybe,” I said.

“Yes. That’s better. Assiduously looking.”

“Or maybe a quench could be a man in his forties who desires to be employed. But has not yet found a job. In spite of assiduously looking,” I said.

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Where are you off to next?” she asked.

“The post office, oddly enough. I have to mail some pillows for Lucy,” I said.

“Who ever thought people would buy so many decorative pillows?” she asked. “I think Lucy is brilliant.”

“When we were first married, Lucy used to buy a lot of decorative pillows. We even used to fight about it,” I said.

“It probably wasn’t the pillows you were fighting about,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“What were you fighting about?” she asked.

“I don’t remember. I just remember being really angry about the pillows. There were so many!”

“Like the bees.”

“The bees?” I asked.

“There were so many,” she said.

Iris Melton is a former waitress/attorney living in the Appalachian Mountains. She learned to swim from a book and has a perverse affection for the Oxford comma.

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October Baseball in Mississippi

26 June 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Mathieu Cailler

The pitcher for the hometown Jackson Prairie High School has just given up a two-run shot into deep right. A curveball that got away from him. He knew immediately from the sound of wood on leather, a perfect pop. The scoreboard tiles flip, heavy, like a vintage alarm clock, and he studies the cocky toss of the bat from number 22, end-over-end, till it settles onto manicured grass; then watches the stride of the batter as he turns first and second, causing soft puffs of dirt to rise from his cleats then settle. The pitcher allows himself rage, doubt, pity for the entirety of the batter’s lap around the bases. But, as soon as 22’s left heel scrapes the rubber of home, the pitcher treats himself to a heavy pour of amnesia. He takes a breath with his whole body, feels the tissue of his lungs fully deflate and rise again. The next batter—Langston McFee, a lefty, a powerhouse with scouts in the stands—strolls into the box, rubs his toe in the dirt, spits accurately. The pitcher collects a new ball from the catcher. High on the mound, sixty feet and six inches away from terror, he reads the signal from his teammate. He nods. He licks his fingers. He fires up his knee, juts his shoulder—every fastball a new beginning.

Mathieu Cailler writes poetry, fiction, essays, and children’s books. His work has appeared in publications including The Saturday Evening Post and the Los Angeles Times. Author of six books, his most recent–Heaven and Other Zip Codes (Open Books)–was winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Book Festival Prize.