Fiction

Roadkill by Christa Faust

written by Christa Faust

Lucy flew along the 5, raw, humpbacked silhouette of the San Gabriel Mountains already in the Nova's rearview and ahead flat endless nothing as dark and hopeless as she felt. She pushed the protesting automobile up to 120, hot dusty wind pulling bleachy-green strands of hair loose from her sloppy ponytail and whipping them across her face. Her lower lip was chapped and she chewed at it till it bled, scraping her teeth across the ragged edges over and over. The cute sparkle blue lipstick was long gone. More...

Coming Home by Maria Alexander

written by Maria Alexander

My mouth is sour with whiskey and the loaded shotgun lays heavily across my lap in my sofa chair. This is my Christmas Eve ritual.

I hate Christmas. The holidays. The time for families to gather to share love and good cheer. Bullshit. I try hard every year to forget there is a Christmas precisely because it reminds me of my family, but this fucking world won't let me. They've romanticized a nightmare. More...

Bagged by David J. Schow

written by David J Schow

We kicked in the door of the crypt with an aluminum battering ram and did the sweep-and-spread you usually do when trying to cover unknown space. No bloodthirsty monsters attacked. Our own blood was up from the first bag of the day; maybe I should tell you about that first. More...

Love Me Tender by Thomas S. Roche

written by Thomas Roche

They hurtle south on 15, the desert sands raining upon them like a plague of locusts. They blast the radio through Cedar City and St. George, Fado singing harmony on "Blue Suede Shoes" at the top of his lungs. Outside of Mesquite, they pause for ref reshment, Senor Fado leaning back in the seat and chuckling while Andre does his job, for which he will be paid in artistic and spiritual coin. Afterwards, Fado puts the Caddy in gear and floors it, sending a bewildered Andre sprawling in the seat, cursi ng in three languages as he wipes his chin. Andre calls the Senor a foul name. Senor Fado responds in kind, laughing, and Andre pouts fetchingly. Afterwards they stop for blue-raspberry slushes at Mesquite's only Meat Market and Convenience Store. More...

Black Roses and Hail Mary’s by Maria Alexander

written by Maria Alexander

As he awoke under the cement overpass, Jonathan heard the distant growl of cars, his own raspy breath, and the old woman’s gentle weeping. The last thing he remembered was Kiro and Sushime cackling over the squeal of tires, although those sounds had escaped into the smog hours ago. Wiping the long, grimy strands of his dyed dark brown hair from his face, Jonathan opened his eyes blearily, gravel biting his back through a beer-stained t-shirt. Steel-tipped black boots, leather pants ripped at the thigh – Fuck! – and a head full of heroin dreams, rolled by his best “friends”… More...

Two Cents Worth by David J. Schow

written by David J Schow

GARAGE SALE, read the sign. I saw the chromium-yellow tagboard, with its big black cartoony arrow, on my way back from the bus stop, stapled to a much-stapled phone pole. The address on the sign was dead between my building and the phone pole. Ever since de-zoning, re-zoning, or whatever other catastrophe acceptable to the City Council's bribed lackeys had befallen this former "neighborhood," the residential blocks had been carved, sliced and diced to please the developers until some bloated fat cat with a cigar in his mush, incipient cancer and a string of embezzlement acquittals had pronounced it "good," like Frankenstein's Monster sucking watery soup. More...

The King of Shadows by Maria Alexander

written by Maria Alexander

“Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.”
-- Puck to Oberon,
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act III, ii

The funeral was today.

I wrote a film some years back about morgue workers. I watched tape after tape of interviews, the mortician’s assistants telling frightful tales about bodies unrecognizable from their wounds, which they dressed and coated with layers of cosmetics. They had learned to make Death rosy-cheeked and peaceful. More...

Some New Kind of Kick by Clint Catalyst

written by Clint Catalyst

The X begins to hit me, tingle in my groin, inner thighs.

Ten after eleven and I'm leaning against the sheetrock of my usual Saturday night spot, the righthand wall of Lillith's dancefloor. Silhouettes of dark figures sway in the fog of the room, the features of nearby dancers discernible in the faint red overhead lights. More...

When Gods Die by Maria Alexander

written by Maria Alexander

Titans and ambulances rage as they emerge from their caves, and sleep, twilight-bound and restless, when they return...

“Head injury, 15 minutes!”

The radio room PA system beeped frantically with the paramedic call for the latest trauma patient. Nine-year-old Rachel Anne Roberts tested at a “1” for every phase of the Glasgow Coma Test: unresponsive. Triage quickly ushered her gurney through the double-layers of automatic glass doors and into the trauma room. Blood draining from her right ear. Many cuts covering her frail body... More...

Pizza Man by Christa Faust

written by Christa Faust

Before I was a professional Dominatrix, I used to work the Peep Booths in Times Square. You know the ones, put your tokens in, the shutter slides up and you get to look through a little window at a LIVE NUDE GIRL. You can even pick up a prison-type telephone rig and talk. Our joint had something for everyone. Surgically sculpted porno queens all stiff blonde hair and big red lips. Cornfed promqueens looking like the cheerleader you always wanted to bang in High School who wouldn't look twice at you cause you were on the chess team instead of the football team. Manic crack-hos like hungry insects and voluptuous Mamacitas and sad old lushes who squeezed their sagging flesh into cheap lingerie and prayed for leftovers when the younger ones were busy. And me. More...