Evidence by James Mulhern

Molly learns some questionable morality from her scheming grandmother; by James Mulhern.

Nonna slipped; her wig flew into a mound of snow. "My back!"

"Help!" I yelled.

A crowd surrounded us.

"Someone, call an ambulance," Nonna screamed. "Don't no one touch me." Her coat and pants were torn.

The bank manager said, "Let me assist you."

Nonna said, "Keep away! Your maintenance person must be a bombast. He should be fired for leaving that ice." She moaned, mascara a dirty mess on her wet cheeks.

"I've got your wig," a hunched-back elderly woman said. "Do you want me to put it back on?"

"Are you crazy? What's a wig gonna do for me? What I need is an ambulance."

The Konigsberg Affair by David W Landrum

In Nazi Germany, a US diplomat discovers a clandestine smuggling operation, and must make a difficult choice; by David W Landrum.

My secretary told me the meeting with Golper was on and that he was waiting for me at a small restaurant seven miles away. Since it was urgent, I left at once. I stuck the reports of the incident that involved him into a diplomatic case, headed to the garage, and threw the satchel into the sidecar of my BMW R75 motorcycle. I am the only US diplomat who lives in this part of the German state of Prussia. We have a Consulate in Konigsberg, but there are enough Americans in the local settlements and surrounding countryside to warrant having a representative for them so they did not have to go all the way to K-Town when they needed something or got into a scrape.

I pulled out on the road that led to the largest town in the area. To my left, the Baltic, grey and choppy, spread north toward Scandinavia and the Arctic. Gulls screeched. The road was clear that morning. I turned the throttle open and felt the cold, raw morning air buffet my face. I liked riding in weather like this. Sometimes after a long ride on a blustery day my face felt like the top layer of skin had been sandpapered off, but the pain was worth the thrill of riding fast, of wind, mist, and rain on my skin - and of nothing ahead but the air and the road.

Kind Girls by Alexander Richardson

Ethel and Elizabeth take diabolical action to avoid a visit from their abusive uncle; by Alexander Richardson. 

Elizabeth clutched the book under one arm and held the wicker basket in the other as she took the steps down two at a time. She reached the front hall, and was about to run out the door when he spoke.

"Lizzie? Just where is it you're goin' to, girl?"

She turned to her father. He wore soiled overalls, and was rubbing an oil-spotted rag between his hands.

"Up to the hills, Pa," she said. "Me and Ethel gonna have a picnic."

He nodded, moving the rag from one hand to the other. "Y'all finish cleanin' your room?"

"Yes, Pa, and I'll dust again 'fore bed."

He smiled. "Good girl, Lizzie. I want ever'thing lookin' nice for your uncle."

She felt a knot in her stomach, and swallowed. "Yes, Pa."

Lessons and Lies by Mitchell Waldman

In a Chicago suburb in 1975, Jewish teenager Robert Friedman tries to muster the courage to ask out his crush, Sandy Auerbach; by Mitchell Waldman.

It was the year the Nazis were threatening to march in Robert Friedman's hometown. It was another so-so year for the Cubs who hadn't won a World Series since 1908. And it was the year that Robert Friedman's interest in the Cubs was starting to be overshadowed by something else...


Robert was seventeen years old and had never been on a date. It wasn't that he wasn't interested in girls. It wasn't even that he couldn't imagine why any girl would go out with him, but instead that he didn't know if any girl on earth even knew he existed. Earth, for this purpose, being the country of the United States, State of Illinois, village of Skokie, and high school, Niles North High.

He didn't know how to act with girls, didn't know what to say to them, got flustered, sweaty palms, knocking knees, pink cheeks, just being around them. It was nuts. While other guys in the neighborhood were hanging around with all the local girls and taking them out on dates, then talking about their exploits in the park at night, smoking their cigarettes, strutting and spouting off about what base they got to with Martha Wasserman or Sharon Silverstein or Penny Moskowitz, he would sit with his hands jammed in his pockets smiling nervously at them, feigning to understand what it was all like. On the fringes of the group, while Steve Bittermyer and Ralph Goldman went on and on, showing what big men they were.

"We were at the drive-in, see," Bittermyer was saying. "You know about drive-ins, right?" The five other guys circling around them, as Bittermyer smoked his twig and bounced the basketball in the dark, broke out laughing.

"Yeah, drive-ins. Who doesn't know about drive-ins?"

A Piece of Your Mind by Ryan Collins

Ryan Collins' character tests the limits of his colleague Randy's whacky conspiracy theories.

"It tastes just like chicken, they say," Randy said as he climbed back in the truck.

"What tastes like chicken?" I asked even though I was pretty sure I didn't want to know.

"Cats." He pulled the door shut. The old delivery truck rocked and squealed.

"Who says that?"

"The fucking orientals, man. Who else?"

We just dropped off a pallet of restaurant supplies to The Golden Dragon, an all-you-can eat Chinese buffet - a damn good one - on the west side of Burton. I nodded at the hunched over old man who'd just signed for the delivery. He was still looking over the invoice. "Mr. Xiu told you that?"

Randy winced. "Naw, man. He wouldn't tell me that. I'm talking about people on the internet. I'm telling you, check out my message boards, man. You'd learn some shit." He punched in the delivery as complete in our tablet and poked his chin at Mr. Xiu. "You ever eat there?"

It'd been a long time since I'd eaten at any Chinese buffet, but as far as I could recall, I hadn't eaten any cats. "Nope."

"You'll never catch me dead in there."

"You think there was any cat meat in the pallet we just gave him?"

Astral Sex by Harrison Kim

Seventeen-year-old Matthew has an out-of-body sexual experience that gives him a new perspective; by Harrison Kim. 

It's midnight, I'm in Bonnie's apartment, I'm seventeen years old and she's a mature woman who wants astral sex, she's lying on her back in her bikini underwear. I'm on my side, my stomach, I'm flipping like a porpoise. Bonnie's going for soul travel, the ultimate high, she says. I have a hard time holding back, viewing the sheen of her legs against the moon light from the window,

"Matthew, we have to breathe in and breathe out slowly," she says. "When we hear a loud bang, that's when our souls leave our bodies, right through the middle of our foreheads."

She continues "I've made physical love with many men, but this is a spiritual calling. If I get pregnant with astral intercourse, I'll be like Mother Mary," she laughs. "We're both spiritual sex virgins, Matthew. That's a real turn-on for me."

"Pregnancy?" I pushed that out of my head. My teenage mind had room for nothing but lust.

---

We met as I rested by my bicycle outside Winfield Hall following my debacle premiere at the Okanagan composers' contest. I'd cycled a hundred kilometres to Kelowna, camped overnight in a baseball stadium in preparation for the event. I entered a song called "Throwback," about a small-town kid who because of his quirks and differences is doomed to work forever in a fast food restaurant.

Around Her by Bruce Costello

A Russian peasant regrets her literacy; by Bruce Costello.

Agafya hears a knocking and through drowsy eyes watches her shrivelled granny leave the table and shuffle to the door of the hut. A familiar figure stands there, silhouetted against the sunlight that floods into the gloom.

Doctor Chekhov enters, greets Granny, goes to the bench where Agafya is lying, and bends to ask how she is feeling.

"So tired. Just awful all over. Can't do anything."

"Let me take a look."

His hands, twice the size of hers, are warm and soft. He has beautiful eyes. So brown with good-natured wrinkles at the corners. And the whites of his eyes under the funny glasses are bright and clear, like the full moon on a frosty night. They say he writes stories, grows flowers and loves all animals, especially dogs. He doctors to peasants without being paid.

In the Heart of the Woods by Christopher Johnson

Ten-year-old Herbie Hereford explores the local woods with his friends, and his courage is sorely tested; by Christopher Johnson.

The woods felt vast to me, with their deep, dark, secret places. They loomed like a sorceress at the end of our block in Upton Grove in northern Ohio, lying thick and black, feeling so different from the everyday life of school and church, tempting me yet repelling me, promising adventure like none we would ever have in the strict, narrow confines of our daily existence.

There were four of us - Darlene, Roger, Tommy, me. We were suburban kids starving for adventure, thirsting to break out. We had a voracious hunger, and the woods beckoned with seductive arms open. Yet we could not have articulated this hunger, which felt like the edge of a sharp knife held against our souls. The need was inchoate. It lay at the back of our ten-year-old collective unconscious - a yearning so acute yet so unexpressed.

Forward: March by Mike Lee

Mike Lee tells the story of two American political refugees in the South American country of Antanzia, with a complicated personal history; by Mike Lee.

"How exhausting all this was. In fact, if only people knew how madly tiresome it is to be a criminal!" 

- Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner 

The question was resolved with an answer I steadfastly refused to accept. My hands became putty in this memory of a profoundly painful aspect of my past. That is, doing something that seemed a good idea at the time, but really never was to begin with.

This fact was laid out before me while with my old camp mate Stefan at a table at the beach in Antanzia City.

We sat under a fuchsia umbrella chatting over some business regarding his novel and likely temporary employment writing copy for a public relations firm I had an excellent connection with.