Flames

written by Brandon French

The way I remember it, I had stayed after school that day, discussing the ending of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” with my English teacher. The street was empty when I came out, except for a very old Chrysler stalled in the middle of 104^th Street and a blond, blue-eyed fellow who was pushing it with sweaty determination, his right arm gripping the steering wheel through the open driver’s window.  To my mildly myopic, twelve-year-old eyes, he looked a lot like James Dean, with his long, sandy blond hair, Levi’s and motorcycle boots, a resemblance that was especially alluring since the real James Dean had died the month before in a car crash in Cholame, California, and I, along with several million other American teenage girls, was mourning his loss. 

Dandelions

written by Chris Stanton

Jake Cooper needed a place to think things over, so he left Sheila passed out on the sofa and called his buddy Paul McBride to ask him for a ride to the junkyard. Jake told him that he had gotten into a scrape with the Datsun and needed to find some parts. Paul always drove into the city on the weekends to visit his infant son, and he said it would be no trouble to give Jake a lift. 

The Underachiever

written by Chris Stanton

Thanksgiving rolled around, and Ted Mulchowsky decided to drop out of college.

He was from a coal mining town down in West Virginia that was so barely there, you could drive from the Dairy Queen at the north side of town to Dusty’s Bail Bonds at the south side, holding your breath the whole time, and you wouldn’t even pass out. Ted had tried it, twice.

Bray of the Tao

written by Jed Wyman

Familiar Walks, Familiar Urges

Lane loves his walk to work, even in the piercing cold and slashing wind. Campus is only four blocks away, and he can make it to the classrooms where he teaches, or the writing lab where he tutors, in less than ten minutes. The walk home is even better, when he is faced with a full view of Mt. Ashtas, canyons riffing down its slopes beneath stabbing crags. Having made the walk almost daily for three months now, Lane is gladdened by its familiar features. There is Chester, the black lab who belongs to the lifted-truck driving, duck-hunting neighbors, who lunges at the fence barking with unrestrained gusto every time Lane walks by. The cottonwood branch he must swerve around.  The driveway with the Plum Crazy ’72 Dodge Demon on blocks.

Unnatural Spring Water

written by Nazli Karabiyikoglu

Do you know what’s very wrong when death is so near? Looking at the mirror.

Barks and shouts and other sounds of daily life coming in from the window make me flinch. What scares me the most is the horizon, where the cloudy sky meets the steppes afar. I think about the streets that I’m about to head out to, to let my body go. This part of the city, where piles of trash fill the sidewalks and neighborhoods are stuffed together, hasn’t welcomed winter yet. Heating stoves aren’t lit, people are still merely chilly.

Another Fall in Ephesus

written by Nazli Karabiyikoglu

Her eyes gazed over the furthest corner of the farm, from the pit she dug amongst dead olive tree trunks. Silent as a dolmen, she was waiting to hear the sound of the earth. Only then she would have dug deep enough. She was aiming for a depth three times the size of a person standing up. In the meantime, she envisioned herself as a beaten Ionian commander whose city had fallen into the hands of her enemy. Her arrows broken, not just against her adversary, but against life. Remaining parts of her cape swung with the wind, her feet and sword covered with blood…

In the Beginning

written by William Bertolo

In the beginning, there was some confusion. 

The project manager was selected to break the news to the engineering director.

“We will have to be ready on the seventh day.”

“What?”

San Vincenzo

written by William Bertolo

1

Mark and Paula left Alys Beach behind in that late summer afternoon, driving west towards Watercolor Beach under an unforgiving Florida sun, which would be the last stop of their visit to the 30A wealthy communities on that day. They had been vacationing in Panama City for a week and had heard really nice things about the several small towns that lay side by side in this unreachable-for-mere-mortals part of northwest Florida. Visiting the area would be a nice break from the restaurant-beach-restaurant loop they had been sucked into in the last seven days (not that they were complaining). But, in any case, a little walk would help them burn away the fat provided by the seemingly neverending amount of bacon and general grease they had been consuming recently.