DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION



EXECUTRIX
Peter Beckstron

BOY
Irene McGarrity

CHALLENGERS, FORWARD
Cara Dempsey

TIME LORDS
Chris Negron

TRUE CRIME
Howie Good

THIS SHOULDN'T BE SUCH AN ORDEAL
Jason Half-Pillow

KISSIN' DON'T LAST
Robin White

EXECUTRIX - peter beckstrom

I’m impatient. Once, I waited in the back of a cramped Chevy Astro, unable to fully stand, for fifty-two hours. My only entertainment was Sudoku and back issues of Newsweek. My only sustenance; canned albacore and Tang. The worst moments were squatting over a five-gallon bright orange bucket from Home Depot. Now, I can’t touch buckets without having gleeful, murderous urges. That particular target received bright crimson pain. I projected my fifty-two hours of discomfort onto his rumpled genitals, right pinky, and both nipples before retiring him. Later that night, I cleansed the noodle machine before making linguine. Red sauce.




Peter Beckstrom
pgbeckstrom@yahoo.com
Knockemstiff
Donald Ray Pollock



BOY - irene mcgarrity

It’s the spoon I like to gag myself with, the wooden one with “boy” carved into the handle. I found it in a junk shop just hanging from a hook by a dirty piece of twine. I thought it would be splintery but it was smooth. The guy who made it sanded the hell out of it like my dad would have. Dad was always in his shop all hours of the night drinking Buds. I could see him making a spoon like that when my mom was pregnant with me. And I could see mom hanging it from the wall, then jamming it into the back of a drawer after I was born.

Lately, it’s my favorite spoon to throw up with. I keep it on a shelf with my razors and pills and lighters, other things I use a lot. After dinner, I tie my hair back and go into the bathroom with the spoon, thinking maybe I’ll be luckier than my dad. Maybe I’ll make a boy. I lift the toilet seat with my foot, and my gags sounds like laughter echoing off the bathroom walls.




Irene McGarrity
https://irenemcgarrity.wordpress.com/
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

CHALLENGERS, FORWARD - cara dempsey

Jennifer's boy kneels in the living room, presses the circle button to rip out the other player's spinal cord, then presses the triangle button so his character can eat that arm like a celery stalk—like the gushing blood is Hidden Valley Ranch. From the kitchen, Jen hears a gravelly voice say, "Fatality". A second later, it says, "Challengers, forward". The kid sits there hours a day with his mouth hanging open, tonguing his molars. The reflection of guts slick with fresh blood bright in his eyes.

In the kitchen, Jen keeps the receiver wedged between her ear and shoulder, repeats "Yes, Ma", "No, Ma". She's cooking a meal that will apologize so that she doesn't have to. She's forgotten an ingredient. Her mother rattles them all off, but she can hardly hear her mother's instructions over the crunching and wailing of the living room deaths. She places the phone on the counter, goes to the doorway to yell about the volume in time to see her husband walk through the front door. She stares at the knot of his tie. His eyes turn to the screen. Opponents face each other. Challengers, forward. 




Cara Dempsey
cdempseyj@gmail.com
Am/Pm
Amelia Gray

TIME LORDS - chris negron

She shifted in the passenger seat. Blue and white flowers danced on her dress and she was ranking the actors who played Dr. Who. “I liked Matt Smith a lot, but Tom Baker is still my favorite.” I wanted to tell her everyone’s favorite was Tom Baker but maybe that wasn’t true and anyway her bent knees were a little bit pink and I wished I kept my car cleaner. 

An old man crossed in front of us. He was walking slowly with bowed legs, as if he were riding something but he wasn’t, he was just walking, and when he looked up, he nodded at me. Without thinking, I waved back. Maybe because no one had ever waved to me all the times I’d lugged my backpack across this same street, hoping I’d meet someone like her, hoping her legs would brush against my seat’s fabric more than just the one time.

“Do you know him?” she asked. Her voice seemed far away. 

I couldn’t tell her I had just traveled in time without a blue box. All I could say was, “Yes.” Really, it was all I could ever say to her.




Chris Negron
chrisnegron.com
Beautiful Ruins
Jess Walter


TRUE CRIME - howie good

The age of barbed wire was just finishing up when I discovered that the ice on ponds is probably never 100 percent safe. Less than an hour later, I was back to work elaborating the immense and complex maze from which I hoped to one day escape. And why? Because I love you like grim police photos of some crime scene. The same algorithm recommended that I read an environmental history of Auschwitz. Instead, I listened to the snow falling, as full of deaths as a Spaghetti Western, and pictured Bach composing with a violin in his hands.



Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com
Undermajordomo Minor
Patrick DeWitt

THIS SHOULDN'T BE SUCH AN ORDEAL - jason half-pillow

Taking a shit like this should not be such an ordeal, but the kids playing with the water balloons are making it one. I ate two cans of Alpo an hour ago and since I’ve got colitis, it runs right through me, so I’m in here with all my belongings in my damn duffel back, just trying to take this shit. The kids come running in, boys being chased by girls, and they’re all throwing water balloons and screaming.

“God Damn It!” I yell, “Can’t a man take a shit in peace?!”

They all stop yelling and dart out and I can hear them through the grate in the little window open above the stall frantically telling every kid who will listen not to go in there because there’s some crazy guy in there taking a shit.

Well that gets the trouble makers coming in and I hear one of them say,

“Fee Fie Foe Fum! I smell an Englishman taking a shit!”

And over the stall door comes an untied water balloon spraying me with water all the way down. Others come in throwing garbage. They get bored and stop. And I try again taking this God damned shit.



Jason Half-Pillow
The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway

KISSIN' DON'T LAST - robin white

There’s something ironic about the ad. Lookin’ for a good time? Call, it said. Nobody has ever had a good time responding to one of those ads. Nobody has ever had a good time placing one of them.

You’ll do whatever I like? I ask.

Sure thing.

A hundred and fifty dollars? I ask.

An extra twenty for kissing.

I thought about it.

A hundred and fifty it is.

Good thinkin’, Sugar. Kissin’ don’t last.

I hung up, and stepped out of the phone booth. It smelled of piss. What kind of a sicko used a phone booth, anyway?




Robin White
https://robinwhitewriter.wordpress.com/
Human Spaceflight From Mars to the Stars
Louis Friedman

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION



AMERICAN SQUIRM
Tom Leins

BREATHING IN
Howie Good

I'M TOO CHEAP TO BECOME A DRUG ADDICT
Kenta Maniwa

FLASH DRIVE
Mark Antony Rossi

CHILDHOOD
Bojan Babic

THE GROUP OF LIONS COMES BEFORE AUTUMN
Christopher James

SHORT ANSWERS
Ursula Villarreal-Moura

AMERICAN SQUIRM - tom leins

Dardanelle has cruel features. It doesn't surprise me when he tells the boys to dip their razors in bleach before cutting the beast. Its legs are small, stumpy almost, but they are strong enough to knock a man off his feet. Dardanelle severs the sail-like fin with his hunting knife. He likes to keep trophies, but the beast looks too big to shift without a flatbed truck.
 
Dardanelle has the carcass of a goblin shark preserved in formaldehyde in his kitchenette. It looks as ugly as sin. It is small, no bigger than an average-sized man, but it looks fucking disgusting. Dardanelle paid a fisherman in French Guiana $1,000 for the fish. I was there when they caught it. The locals chained it to a palm tree and left it to rot in the sun. It took three hours to die.
 
The beast's breathing becomes ragged, and Dardanelle slit its flabby throat. Before walking away he wedges a hand grenade in its mouth. Malice glints in his good eye. It blows the lower jaw and the crocodile-like snout clean off.
 
Tonight Dardanelle will retire to his rooming-house with a small, snub-nosed prostitute. He likes to celebrate in style. 
 


Tom Leins
Crimes In Southern Indiana
Frank Bill

BREATHING IN - howie good

The technician wears a Joan of Arc haircut. She says, “Just do what the machine says.” The machine is a tube with rotating lights. I’m lying on my back inside it, pants down around my ankles. Even if I could find a pretty accomplice to escape over the border with me, the border has probably already been unpinned, repositioned, and pinned again. The machine says, “Breathe in and hold your breath.” There’s a menacing buzz, followed by a burst of light, and then the machine says, “Breathe.” I have the same questions everyone else must have: can funeral expenses be claimed on taxes? Is this real? How do you say “fellatio” in French?

 



Howie Good
The Lunatic
Charles Simic

 

I'M TOO CHEAP TO BECOME A DRUG ADDICT - kenta maniwa

I was on Xanax, alone, watching Space Jam on my computer, when, towards the end of the movie, at 6:00AM, after my alarm clock made a noise, I realized the relationship between loneliness and independence. It was not an epiphany, not rock bottom, but something unexpected and clear, an experience that, like Michael Jordan's acting, was right because it was wrong. As I watched the sun crawl through the blinds, the crisp morning air pinning my skin, drying my cheeks, I felt a smile bleed across my face, stretching, gliding, maybe, away from apathy, sarcasm, and death, in the direction of something beautiful and vague, squishy – happy.
 


Kenta Maniwa
Fast Machine
Elizabeth Ellen

FLASH DRIVE - mark antony rossi

I can fit my fucking life in a flash drive.
I know it sounds depressing but it’s not window dressing.
This shit is real.


I traveled the world writing poems and books.
I married a wonderful woman and we had two kids.
Yet I feel dead inside.


It’s not their fault. It’s not your fault.
I’m not very sure it’s my fault.
Something deep says I haven’t done enough.


I want to lecture in a world that can’t listen.
I want to listen in a world that can’t shut up.
I want to see in a world that hides in the dark.


I can fit my fucking life in a flash drive.
Fit in a digital landscape dearth of feeling.
Fit for a man dying to leave a legacy.

 



Mark Antony Rossi
http://markantonyrossi.jigsy.com
Ghost Soldiers, The Epic Account of WWII's Greatest Rescue Mission
Hampton Sides

CHILDHOOD - bojan babic

Gee!
We ride a small wooden slaughtered horse. Our nails are stained with blood because we have killed half the village with a small crystal knife. We will sell our stockings and throw our dolls when we grow pubic hair. We will spend fresh mornings in New Orleans – where people wear wide hats.
You will marry me.
I will marry you.



BOJAN BABIĆ
The Melancholy of Resistance
Laszlo Krasznahorkai



THE GROUP OF LIONS COMES BEFORE AUTUMN - christopher james


When I barbacked in Soho Manse, I could always count on unsnorted coke on the toilet seat lids. Five or six times a night I’d go there, blub my finger, rub the powder, and dub my gums. Sometimes I’d discover money too. Rolled twenties, forgotten or discarded by those too rich and high to care. It got so I’d spend more time in the bogs than on the floor. In the end, though, I lost that job because somebody’s girlfriend tried to stick her tongue all up in my palate. Dude, said my friend. Don’t you know who she is? She’s the future Mrs Me, I intoned, grand enough. Except she wasn’t, of course. I got a job in another club, one with the acrid plastic smell of crack in the toilets and forgotten, discarded bic tubes on the floor, and I saw her there too, looking less fancy. Again, she wanted to kiss, but I’d learnt my lesson. Dude, said my colleague. Don’t you know who she was? No, I told him, but I know who I am.
 


Christopher James
sutcliffechris@hotmail.com
The Vagrants
Yiyun Li

SHORT ANSWERS - ursula villarreal - moura


The therapist asks about my first memory of despair. This is too easy: a multiple-choice question with the correct answer listed as a), b), c), and d). I reply with a wince—Sunday afternoons of my youth spent in my parents’ living room, dust atoms arrested in sunlight, newspaper strewn about, and the judgmental remnants of Sunday mass percolating within me. This was my primer, my first lesson in vanishing hope.
 
What about my current state of despair, the therapist asks. It’s true these emotions have matured from zygotes into adults. They’ve lost teeth, outgrown their braids and mohawks, sat for yearbook pictures, worked crap jobs, fought with lovers, and concocted plans to end the flipbook of my life. Yet even when prompted, I am reluctant to measure the depth of their reservoir—to acknowledge the sedimentary layers of their helplessness.
 
The therapist invites me to imagine my life free of despair. She is testing my loyalty, determining whether I possess the fortitude to bury my own. 
 
Within a month, I’ll forget the therapist’s name, the waiting room couches, the wall art that hints at new beginnings.
 


Ursula Villarreal-Moura
Twitter @ursulaofthebook
Tampa
Alissa Nutting

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

All artwork belongs to PAUL RIBERA


All stories by SARA WILLIAMS

 DARK AND ALIVE

 HUNGER: KINETIC FRAMES

 OF LACE AND STONE

 KNIVES TO BE BRANDISHED
w/ Ruthe Thompson

 BUT I BUILT THE SKY

 I MEANT TO TELL YOU TO DANCE

 LAST
w/ Jesse Eagle

DARK AND ALIVE - sara williams



for Nathaniel Mackey


I’m deader than meat; I’m digested. Look at this flesh, falling from my bones, slippery as any ground your body rests on. Love wrapped in a sheath, barely breathing. This air is as old as your milk, rancid and pretty. When he held love cold against our hips, we shook. That movement took the place of dancing. The cherry trees blossomed last week, myriad bombs sounding off through scent. The sweet smell of death; a death chant. The petals have all fallen to the ground, turned to mud and mold. Each time I see the leaves, full as any moon I might wish on, I drown. We rest on a leafless bough; the bough, dark and alive as Hera’s blood, reaches for blue, breaking sky and ruptured earth, and stays rooted to the trunk all at the same time. We notice none of this. I dance madly, having grown two heads while my feet and legs shrivel and ascend, disappearing into my center. Just arms, two heads and torso now, I find new rhythm. I decide not to get the knife and chop my body up, not to burn it like firewood, but to breathe, dark and alive as I am.

HUNGER: KINETIC FRAMES - sara williams



for Peter Schwartz


I am hungry, the road is black and I’m drowning down here. I can’t sleep like I used to. I have no bones, no teeth. I’m under the mountain that’s beneath the sea that’s under the surface that can’t speak, vomiting what I can’t breathe. I’m coal, moaning red. The sink overflows. The truest tide doesn’t. I watch the blue blood and dark gray meat swell. My hands and feet are tied, tied tight to the long light that lands on each slat of wood and melds into metal and makes the vehicle smooth and right. There’s no day no night no day no night. I suggest a paved escape route through our pineal glands. I suggest feeling your way through. Teach yourself to distinguish the difference between float and simmer, kettle and whistle, life and afterlife. You can be a clarifying ocean; you can see the waves thick on your inside skin. But here we are, boneless, toothless, groaning. I am the red hunter that waits and waits. I cross my arms across my chest. I clean my fingernails. I watch the snow drop and melt. I, the red hunter, is the one who sits and waits on the winter to wake up, to come home. The winter takes over. I’ve captured punishment and tuned in real wide. I spin; I falter; I frame the nook in gray. I wait for the weight to fall, the knives to be brandished, the water to warm. This is where I wait, cold and whole and like home.

OF LACE AND STONE - sara williams



I am the stone child wrapped in lace. I am the winter inside. I am the red hunter that waits and waits for the prey to fall, for the prey to ready itself, for winter warmth to kill what gets up, what moves in the dark. I am the dark hunter that waits and waits between shadows and heirlooms, in the attic, in the basement, below, between, always between. The red hunter hunts for life, for the sun to bleed through, for pride, for shamelessness, for shoelaces wrapped around dreams. Each time there’s a push, a running into the woods, a running into the street without fear, the hunter knows where to aim. The hunter is warm, is alive; hunter is bright and quick and the color of new death. White is the quiet death or the time before death or the time before the knowledge of death. Little reasons pile up like lace and steam, clutching bills and doves. Collect me. I am the red hunter that waits and waits. I am the white winter billing the earth. White doesn’t know death, doesn’t know an end. Gray knows all the ways for things to end and helps them to use a broken belt as a hair tie. I bind each strand with something like stones or stars. Strike me down now, please. I’ve got everything to live for, but I can’t.

KNIVES TO BE BRANDISHED - sara williams & ruthe thompson



The stars align between antagonists. Bones tremble and bury ancient sorrows, ancient births. The liquid fire of breath and mottled coals—unloneliness— curse campanile bells. Green leaves crack from crumbled earth, the bud of an anemone, the piston of a tulip, the starlight of a dog. This summer burned down last night and whited out a gaseous planet turned on its hip. A limb climbs out, another one, a clawing hand, two feet that kick. Where is the bright damage that makes a forest into a plane? It’s in the stars; it’s in the kaleidoscope’s pops and clicks; it’s coming out of groaning concrete, taking its first breath.

Let us unloose the knives, discard the sheaths, uncross the limbs that broke upon impact. Let us reknit and refold the shaken dance into a plume of dust. Let us fold and watch a blasted tree grow new skin while gilded limbs encase and shimmy up. Here, the monster offers life for a box of tiger lilies, flaming synecdoche that traverses scales of deadly melodies. There, gargoyle wings are overgrown with columbine, magenta pink and white. Let us nose downward. Let us emasculate ourselves. Let the monster’s limbs be unbreathed, unbroken, unsung.

BUT I BUILT THE SKY - sara williams



I can’t stone the death. Can’t run the spectrum of lights for sale. Every possession determines the clarification of sandstone and saltwater. It’s gravity between soul searches, searching for souls between rocks and hard places. The slippery scene, falling right off the arrow’s ledge. Courageous diegesis framed by kinetic distortions. I am the red hunter that waits and waits, waits for the dance to unravel, to unsoar, to unsoothe the dream to make for a lonely avalanche to unloose chords, cords, falling forward, calling towards an unaching, unhinged light.

I am the weight awaiting trial. I am awaiting the loss of broad flashes. I am a culled dream, the slight distortion of falling. I am the red hunter that quelled the stones right out, quelled the disease so you could remake, renew. It’s loss before gain, loss between gates, the swollen reminder, echoes unclear and unbroken between beats in the dark. Slow freak, the crawl of the creek, slow and cold, culled late and between sheets. Echo of the sweet, the solipsistic desire, the groove of this goddamned light. I fought for scissors and knives, fought to open my body up until there was nothing left, nothing but meat and bones and sinews of blonde and black, the sinews like coiled frames unfurled, finally released into starless tissue and bones.

I MEANT TO TELL YOU TO DANCE - sara williams



I meant to tell you that I’m broken between sheets and cans of crayons, the law between hums. Listen. The tiger hums, sluts it up and sighs. Listen. You’re running on empty and listing evolutionary details that won’t quit hammering some survival scream. Bleach the soles of your feet. That’s what I did. Now I’m clever as Jesus, humming a tune, walking above water, absorbing the earth, my tongue long and slick with limitless bees warm as yellow, yet beaten down. Now we’re sailing bucolic heights. Listen. I’ve got to tell you. I’ve a dance that crawled beneath the alligator’s claw to make slits in her dress. I’ve a dance that slipped past a disaster into milk and bees, into directions home. I’ve a dance that built the sky from echoes and scars. The sacred is unraveling. The crawlspace opens silk ropes into a tidy knot, the brilliance and sweat of a trance, a railing backwards like the stunned babes of cows. The sacred is unraveling now. Like a light I can’t process even as I dance to the blossomed terrace and ache through the twisted groundlessness of desire. Bells wake up tragedy and the dance leans into a star, a new name. The name is cross-eyed lady and we’re crawling beneath arrows, sucking earth into our gums.

LAST - sara williams & jesse eagle



Graffiti scars like ghosts in flight leave trails of chemical dust. It’s Easter, motherfucker. We’re praying inside layered rust, boasting backwards, growing new tails. We are kissing the sky black. Your hair smells like pepper and fruit. You are something eggshell ancient. We are only last year’s same tongue. Our lips spill down sheets, suck up smoke. We’ve become our own consumption, a metallic green god trampled by whole wolves. Fill up with trashwater. Forget your fucking mothers. Here’s to making things last.

Those waves sunk cold last night, lifting only because we let them. Shadows were our undercurrent, our sharks. Give me a little skylight to burn through. Give me a hole to fill. We will only last here as long as we want. We can last. It’s groundless, this frame of guardians and twilight unfolding. Guard against nothing, not the skylight, not the dormant winter, not the red hunter that waits. Don’t wait. Wish. We are something silk even as the worms dry. Like a prey bird, the flowers blossom against a skinned sky and dip back towards home.

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION



I STILL CARRY THE GHOSTS OF WOLVES
Sara Michelle Williams

AT THE BURGER KING ACROSS FROM THE VEGETARIAN PLACE 
Greg Letellier

UNLOADING THE TRUCK
Joe Milford

#IHAVEDIGITALHERPES
Marie Greaves

HABITAT
Jesse Bradley

I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU AGAIN
Emily Carpenter

A MEMORY FROM CHILDHOOD
Fiona Helmsley

I STILL CARRY THE GHOSTS OF WOLVES - sara michelle williams



for Joe Wills

I am a frozen whip. I am a bowl of blue rings and swollen melon seeds that urge us home. Home is that dark gray place that sings its silence, that dark wet with too many ghosts. I wait for the whip to drop, for the warmth to come. I am the winter inside and there’s a life underneath I can’t hold.

I run away, run into the tailor of things. I finger the tailor’s scissors. They fall and split, turn to knives that raise me; I face the wolves that didn’t have it in them to raise anything but themselves. Their breath is frigid steam rising from their bellies out through their teeth. I brandish my knives and cut the cold right out. I reassemble the knives into scissors and reach for a new hallucination, a new goatskin. I am the tailor sewing myself a new mask, a new desire.

I still carry the ghosts of wolves. I am the wolf belly bride, swollen to the world, empty inside like a bell you ring for service. I swallow the long tight click of language that fails; I drop myself down and dream the dark alive.



Sara Michelle Williams
saramichellewill@gmail
A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon
CA Conrad

AT THE BURGER PLACE ACROSS FROM THE VEGETARIAN PLACE - greg letellier



You and I were eating at the burger place across from the vegetarian place. I said: “Nothing beats a plate of fries and ketchup.” 
You said: “Speaking of catching up, how are you doing?” and I knew how meant who and I knew doing meant screwing. 
So I said: “Vanessa.” 
That’s when you got quiet. But the silence was broken. The waitress bounced over, poured us water, and asked if we needed anything else, and I think for a sliver of time Vanessa slipped out of your mind, slinked out of your brain like a burglar out of a back door; or maybe her name dissolved into the murky broth of temporarily forgotten things, along with Pythagorean Theorem and your dog Scribble’s middle name. 
Which was Lester, I remembered. 
And I said that, too. Because I was proud. 
“What about my dog?” you said, dunking your fries in ketchup. 
My instinct was to wish I was dead, dead as Scribbles under a Toyota. But I loved you too much to be dead. I loved you so much, back then.
You asked again: “Jay. What about my dog?” 
I bit my burger and it bled. “Never mind,” I said. “Nothing.”




Greg Letellier 
 http://gregwritesstuff.tumblr.com/
I Go To Some Hollow
Amina Cain

UNLOADING THE TRUCK - joe milford



It only takes three hours and 1400 pieces of dollar store merchandise for Jason to complete his story of copulating with the cashier from California on the night shift who claimed to have once been a stewardess. I say copulating because I also pretend to have several academic degrees while unloading the truck with Jason slinging down wooden shelves and cases of cranberry juice screaming from the interior of the truck about her fat ass. We take a 15 minute break, hit the liquor store, and pound PBRs in his car in the parking lot before going back in to finish the shift. Three weeks later he thinks he got her pregnant. I am applying for college. The truck is smaller and smaller. It was good there for a while.



Joe Milford
http://www.joemilfordpoet.com/
Alone and Not Alone
Ron Padgett

#IHAVEDIGITALHERPES - marie greaves



It’s like one moment you are sitting. And then next you are not. You’re standing but you feel like you’re whirling in the white sheets of a hospital bed. Just looking at the pretty picture outside waiting for death.
Counting how many men or women 500, 502 and there was . . . , 510. Like counting the days in February, there are skips.
And for a moment you feel afraid. Scared! Terrified! Horrified! Overwhelmed! Like you-got-to-seize-the-day!

First it’s very normal. You enter it all in google.
Then it becomes too much! And you question how did they get there? Who? Why?
That’s the first week: Monday to Sunday.
Then things pop up and annoy you. Pop Vagina! Pop Ass Cheeks! Pop Mouth! Pop Breast!
And you think and you think and then you google it again: how to live life with. . .
Google says. And you follow. And you follow on Facebook the Guru with the Good life. And you follow the Pretty Poser on twitter.
But they must have it too, right?
They must have it?
Because you can see it!
You can see it, their digital herpes clustering. Just count the numbers.



Marie Greaves
hypersexualizeme.tumblr.com 
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy

HABITAT - jesse bradley



Neil asks where the photos are. I hand him a sheet of paper, his favorite green crayon. “What do you want to remember?”

“Mom.”

“You know what to do.”

The crayon hits my collarbone. “I know you have to have at least one photo of her. Where is it?”

It’s better you forget. It’s better to learn to quit missing her. I get up, pat Neil’s head. “The last one I had was in my wallet and it was stolen. Remember?”

Neil nods, picks up the crayon. He draws a crooked head, spaghetti hair, eyelashes that could snatch you like a Venus flytrap, eyelids that could digest you slowly.



Jesse Bradley
https://about.me/iheartfailure
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Erik Larson

I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU AGAIN - emily carpenter



At the words force of nature, her shoulders squared and settled. 

Then came intelligent, and her skin went taut, snapped like a clean bedsheet over her bones. She tingled all over.

Fantastic lengthened her neck and waved her hair. She held her breath. The changes had spun her out. She’d grown dizzy and disoriented. Alarmed, in fact.

Intriguing, engaging then exquisite, and she nearly toppled off her chair onto the glazed tiles below. She flattened her palms against the table to stay upright. She worried she might drift, then lose consciousness. The half-drunk glass of white had become superfluous. Anything was possible. 



Emily Carpenter
emilycarpenterauthor.com
The Wilding 
Benjamin Percy 

A MEMORY FROM CHILDHOOD - fiona helmsley



A memory from my childhood: We’re at the beach. A bunch of older, cool kids are there, too. Something is going on. Two older, cool girls are huddled together, and one of them is crying. One girl puts her hand on the other girl's elbow, trying to calm her. It’s clear they are having a serious conversation; it appears something’s at stake. Two older, cool boys are also huddled together. “Alright. Great idea. Let's mix it up,” one of the boys says. “We’re good?” They shake hands. One of the friends I’m there with is the little sister of one of the girls in the cool group, though her sister isn’t one of the girls huddled together. Whatever has happened, it’s dramatic, and all us younger kids want to know what it is, so my friend asks her sister, once things have calmed down. “The boys decided to swap girlfriends,” she says. “At first Jen wasn’t cool with it, but finally she agreed.” I look over to where the cool kids are sitting on a blanket. Jen's cheeks are red from crying. Her new boyfriend is putting suntan lotion on her back. She looks like she might throw up.




Fiona Helmsley
fionahelmsley@yahoo.com
Edgewise: A Portrait of Cookie Mueller
Chloe Griffin.


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