Posts

Mister Hands by Grant Brown

Image
A psychologist in a mental asylum laments the lack of progress in his most confounding patient, Corny Bird. Photo by Ron Lach, from Pexels The people in this place both confuse and disgust me. Do you know what they call me here? Never will there come a day where I do not baffle myself for not spontaneously quitting this establishment. The people here are all insane. For example - yesterday, Corny Bird (I absolutely refuse to believe that's his name, but the records indicate it so, and he has never admitted to anything else so long as he has been my patient) vomited on himself after becoming sick with guilt, and reportedly smeared bile on my office door. It looked more like urine, though. His room is very close to my office. On the late nights, I can hear him through the wall. Corny Bird gives me this tingly feeling of discomfort - déjà vu. I'm quite certain that him and I have met in many lives before. He doesn't help with this because sometimes, he tells me we are one and...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Sprinkling of Stardust by Karin J. Robinson

Image
In a small town on the eastern coast of England, singer-magician Gareth Fisher discovers his biggest fan is a genuine legend, and then everything changes. Image generated with OpenAI During their third summer at the Cromer Pier Theatre, Cassandra Burns informed Gareth Fisher that she would no longer let him to cut her into pieces and put her back together again. "It's banal. The sawing a girl in half trick? Come on." She swept her long black hair up into a smooth bun. "Anyway, I'm a singer, not a magician's assistant." They had both been hired for their singing, straight out of secondary school. But it was all-hands on deck at the Cromer Pavilion, and Gareth wasn't above being helpful. Showing willing. So after the Great Lorenzo retired, he'd brushed up his old birthday-party act. Cassandra had been asked to stand in as his assistant, donning a sequinned body suit and crawling into his wooden box. She considered it undignified. "Fine,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Delusion by Cris Aboobaker

Image
Sam has been working too much, and suffers an unsettling delusion. Image generated with OpenAI One night, as he worked late in the office, Sam was astonished to see the shadow of lettering embedded in the bony knob of his right elbow. As he bent his arm toward the men's room mirror, he could make out the word. Androm, it said, and as he brought his face closer, he could see the stylized, cursive "A." It looked like a corporate logo, as if designed by a creative agency. Like BB&D, the agency he worked for. He pulled on his arm but could not twist it enough to see. The lettering was in his blind spot; he could only see it in the mirror. But, in his thirty-five years of life, he had surely seen his elbow in the mirror many thousands of times and never noticed this feature. Nor had any friend, lover or family member ever pointed it out to him. He had come to the men's room to relieve the full bladder that had been tormenting him for the past hour, distracting him from...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Wingless Butterfly by Wajad R. Basha

Image
Nora is coming up to her 16th birthday, and her demanding mother has got her an extreme gift. Image generated with OpenAI Nora reached out for the juice cup, but before she could grab it, her mother hit her hand. "Not now, Nora! We'll be eating soon." "But I'm thirsty! The food isn't done yet!" Her mother didn't respond, but she took the cup off the counter and looked at her with narrow eyes. Nora went upstairs to her room, her brows furrowed. She collapsed on the bed, staring at the ceiling. If only the festival would come sooner. Her crush would be there; she hoped that if he heard her voice, he might ask her out. When she asked her mother if she would come to the festival, she just shrugged and said nothing. She touched her nose. The hook , as most kids called her. She constantly asked her mother for a way to make it look better using makeup. Her response was always, "Nothing could hide your big nose. Just accept it." "Come down, N...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Is a Piece of Chalk by Lisa Meltzer Penn

Image
Alison remembers a school exercise set while the PE teacher was playing substitute in her sixth-grade Composition class. Image generated with OpenAI At first bell, the door at the end of the hall swings open and I am swept in a crush of other middle-schoolers into sixth-grade Composition class. Room 11 is half the size of a normal classroom, like a stage magician's lovely assistant climbed into a box and was sawn in two, leaving us with the bottom. Presto change-o. I imagine the top half someplace else with the assistant smiling and waving at the audience. Elementary school has been disappeared and Language Arts divided into Literature and Composition. I greet the teacher and slip between rows of narrow half-desks bolted to plastic chairs just big enough to hold a sixth-grader and her black-and-white composition book. He looks up as I pass. "Good morning, Alison." I slide into my seat in the back just before second bell. We are twenty-four magician's rabbits back in ...
Post a Comment
Read more