“Are you willing to accept spiritual warfare?”
“Yes”
“Mental warfare?”
“Yes”
“Moral degradation?”
“Yes”
“Cognitive dissonance?”
“Yes”
“And finally, death?”
All in Fiction
The heat from the stove had warmed the small kitchen from inviting through cosy to where it sat now at uncomfortable. Abyan knew it wouldn’t be long before it became unbearable, but she had to finish all of the cooking before then anyway; their guests would arrive somewhere between uncomfortable and plain hot so the kitchen would be left to its final stages of heating up and cooling down again without her. She would be in the lounge room serving light refreshments of sambuus while Ramaas poured the hot, spiced tea by then. Her nerves made her impatient and she resisted the pointless urge to remove the lid from the cubed chicken and prod it into cooking faster.
Boys, this is what I have wanted to say, what I want to say, all I can say about my folks. It will have to do. You connect the dots. I don't want to or don't know how.
The boy climbed the steps two at a time, emerged into the blinding sun on 59th Street, then hurried to the corner squinting at a scrap of cream colored note paper upon which his father had sketched a map with directions. Stopping in the middle of the street, sweat seeping through his jacket, he got jostled a few times from behind. No one said excuse me, or if they did he couldn’t hear them above the blare of raging car horns. He shaded his eyes, looked across to Central Park South, realized he’d walked the wrong way, then turned around and located the skyscraper with its shiny bluish mirror-like windows.
1. When lifting heavy objects such as art history anthologies or potted ferns, always hinge at your lower back and focus on your groin for energy. These are main components of your “core” and generally the strongest muscles in your body. As you lift your Norton reader it’s recommended you release deep guttural yowls—for self-motivation.
Since before we moved houses, that old Polaroid has been sitting there, beside my mother’s bed, for as long as I can remember. I try not to look at it when I walk into her room, the walls yellow with cigarette smoke. And even after she has shown it to me, I can never seem to remember his face.
Mike’s great-grandmother and great-aunt decided to go to the cemetery on a Friday, and forced him to come along. He dawdled, playing in the sandbox with his orange plastic alien action figures, then pretended he could not hear when his great grandmother called. Finally, she came after him and asked him to go get a switch. “I’m gonna get a hold of ya. Get a big switch. You get a small one and it’ll be worse,” Milly, his great-grandmother, said, hands on her broad hips. At seventy she was plump, dark-tanned, wrinkled and strong. Mike remembered yesterday’s beating, after he had drunk her last Mellow Yellow. It had been hard, but short.
“Welcome to the abode,” John boomed.
Mark found John in his usual state: The will-o’-wisp floating in the centre of the room. His naked form perched on a mountain top of rug and fur. His feet rummaging endlessly in a shag pile beneath his toes. His right and left hands fingering the invisible strings of a most exquisite instrument, while a large vein protruded from his abdomen and bulged in syncopation with his silent symphony; throbbing, it traced upwards past his thorax, found his neck and disappeared into his gaunt face, which surveyed his gaudy kingdom.
When Kate was twelve years old, she started to shrink.
Her parents didn’t notice for several months, until she stood against the kitchen doorpost and the crayon balanced on top of her head created a line that was an inch below the one from six months earlier. “Maybe we marked it wrong last time,” her mother said. “Maybe you were wearing shoes last time,” her father said, looking down at her sternly. “I think my feet are getting smaller,” Kate said.
And then Gaddafi came in, totally in drag. Not just eye shadow, which he was famous for, but a full evening dress, pearl necklace, and hose. Rouge on his cheeks. Four burly female bodyguards tailed him, holstering guns. Besides the slight dip in volume of conversation, no one at the party acted like anything was askance. Gaddafi’s were lips the red, it occurred to me, of that "Say goodbye a little longer" chewing gum, and it was that commercial jingle that played in my head as I watched him walking in heels like he practiced it.
Cort was asleep when the car crashed into the side of his building. He’d lost his job only a week and a half earlier, and had taken to sleeping until the early afternoon. In the summer heat he’d started sleeping on the screened-in porch.
“Again.” I waited for his response, anticipating a sigh.
“Again?” John checked his mirrors and signaled his emergency lights, but no sigh. There’s a plus.
“Oh, yes, again. Pull over,” I muttered, reaching for the paper towels. As I looked away, I felt his stare penetrating me. Too commanding, too bossy, too everything, once again. I knew.
The whole thing was rotten. A wet heap that piled in and on itself, leaving white flecks of paper hanging in the water like a snow globe.
He sighed.
“It’s all that extra ply,” he said. He tried to sound confident.
In the very center of the grassy commons stands a regal statue of Thaddeus Wallace. One hand grasps a weighty tome while the other thumbs a jacket lapel. Wallace University’s founder faces the administration building and oversees the comings and goings of all students, but his bronzed eyes aren’t the only pair watching. Waiting. Looking.
The mall is perverse. It’s a haven to me. Teenage girls look at teal thongs. Young guys with too much cologne offer to massage my hands. I sneak a Cinnabon when I’m supposed to be on a diet. I always see a father at the mall, secretly wishing his toddler would grow up and leave the house. I feel safe. Everything hidden is predictable.
Walter Bumpus was forty-three days shy of his eighty-first birthday when his calendar finally ran out. His last words were less than poetic.
“Not too shabby,” he said, placing his empty dish on the counter. “I think I’ll have that again for dinner. Leave it out and I’ll fix another plate when I get hungry,” he told wife number three, as he shuffled across the linoleum floor stabbing the tile with his cane for traction and stability.
I watched it all. I looked up and saw the whole thing and I didn’t move because I thought it wasn’t real. It just didn’t look real. I watched as one of them fell and when the first cloud of smoke and dust flooded the street, I jerked awake and got inside my truck. But all the soot and ash were too fast and some got inside and I looked outside the window and all I could see was gray. My eyes started stinging and I couldn’t keep them open and I wanted to get out and run, I didn’t want to stay, but I couldn’t leave so I sat there breathing in the remains of the city. Then I heard a boom and the next one fell.
FICTIONSmoke RingsKeith Buie
The cabinets clash with the countertops. Matching mahogany-stained floorboards and cupboards accentuate black granite countertops and backsplash tiles. The intention: a dark, bold appearance. The result: the kitchen looks like a giant Hershey bar.
FICTIONUncomfortable AdventuresNathan Tompkins
Yoshi hated being old. Her joints and the rest of her body were stiff and sore with age. She slept a lot, so at times it wasn’t too bad, except when she woke and had to rise after many hours. It was difficult to get her legs to cooperate. She’d slip on the hardwood floor or even on the ramp to the back yard.
FICTIONThe Disappearing ActorNick McGinley
He couldn’t quite explain it, but Aidan felt that if he didn’t look at himself in the mirror, to really look, to shore up any and all doubts, to burn the motivation coming from his eyes into his psyche, if he didn’t have a proper stare to recharge his identity, oh about, once every twenty minutes or so, he’d disappear.