Our Winter Issue is out! Available in print and PDF form – featuring
two contests and contributions from the past year and a half!
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by Jon Boisvert DISCON He frames his tag, two nihilistic syllables— by Leo Falcao Grey clouds cluster together and quickly approach, altering the day’s dusk. On the brink of an inevitable storm, the small village of Avila, in Mexico’s extreme northwest, prepares to see the world appear a little smaller. Before her, a newly arrived young man smiles. He has fair skin, dons a sparse beard and is wearing slightly rounded glasses. His luggage amounts to a rucksack and a large folder with a strap. His attire indicates that he has been travelling for a long time, facing the characteristic cold of this time of year. an excerpt from the novel Scarabocchio I had not been back at the hotel more than a quarter of an hour when there came a knock at my door and I opened to find Dr. Praetorius stooping over a guttering candle that lit up his white wisps of hair like a demonic halo. ‘Won’t you come and observe my little experiments, Professor?’ he said, and then added in a singsong undertone, ‘Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, Will you join the dance?’ to which accompaniment he executed a species of shuffling dance. He then laughed a singular dry little laugh that was more like a cough than anything else. Somewhat taken aback by this display, I nonetheless accepted the invitation – indeed, to have done otherwise would have been awkward and I had, after all, a certain curiosity as to what manner of ‘experiments’ the strange little Doctor would prove to be engaged upon. I confess it had occurred to me that he did not appear to be a suitable guardian for his sensitive young charge, but this need have no bearing on his aptitude in the field of pure science. I shut the door to my room but neglected to lock it (an omission I was to rue later in the evening), and followed him up the broad staircase in the dark, guided only by the fitful light of the candle. We had climbed to the attic storey before he turned down the narrow corridor and stopped before a heavy oaken door identical to my own. I was wondering to myself why, in an empty hotel, he had been given rooms so far out of the way, when I heard a low sobbing and the sound of someone or something thumping at the wall. The Doctor turned to me as if I had spoken aloud. ‘My charge is sometimes restless at night,’ he said. ‘It is better for us to lodge well away from the other guests.’ He unlocked the door to the room and bid me walk in. by Allan Shapiro That night I was too happy to not fall asleep. That night I was convinced the world was coming to an end. I was watching Night of the Comet and it reminded me of when I was bar mitzvah’ed and how I thought such an event would be the catalyst for the world’s end and how disappointed I was that it wasn’t. The world was what it was and continued in earnest up to this point. So that night I listened to a woman loudly moaning outside before I fell asleep. The moans consisted of unintelligible words, just a collection of meaningless tones rising from her gut and scratching through her throat, over and over, the same sound over and over, until a man yelled out a window, “Will you please just shut the fuck up!” and the woman stopped, and when she continued again, her meaninglessness was much quieter. Then I smiled as I continued to watch Night of the Comet because I knew it was coming soon, and before I knew it, I was asleep, dreaming of being in a place I had never been before, and in this place I had never been before, I was frantically searching for a place to live. It was a complicated place to negotiate since most of the streets were actually hallways in an apartment building and in order to get from one area to another, I had to pass through other peoples’ homes. Most of these homes were filled with beautiful college-aged women and they were all singing the same song. “My baby only loves my butter,” they would sing while rubbing handfuls of butter on their chests. “My baby only gets his butter from me.” by Mariana Sabino INT. WAKE – NIGHT A funeral service with SEVERAL MOURNERS milling around, sniffling and comforting each other. They take turns making the rounds to look in the casket. Then a WOMAN in her mid-fifties storms in, crying hysterically. She heads straight towards the casket. SANDRA She throws herself at the casket to lean over the BODY of an ethereal-looking young woman. She then reaches in to touch the departed’s cheek. SANDRA From their various places: BIANCA SETH SANDRA by Eric Spooner The day was already warming up as we rolled into what looked like a dusty hellhole of a desert town around 8 am with the windows rolled down. As I drove east from Reno on the interstate, the first couple of “Two Stiffs Selling Gas” billboards had heightened our expectation of some hilarious or unusual point of interest to break the monotony of the trip. But after a hundred miles and a dozen more sightings of the same billboard, our arrival in Lovelock was pretty anti-climatic. The joke about two stiffs passing gas had long ago ceased being funny and the town itself looked fairly dead. But Chip was the perfect prophylactic for boredom: someone who was constantly entertaining himself and anyone around him. Practically his every utterance was part of a perpetual performance of unscripted satire in which he was the star. He was almost always in character yet constantly changing character as warranted to suit a change in scene. “You know, most counties in Nevada have legalized prostitution,” Chip said in his normal persona, or at least the one I associated as being the real Chip. He checked my reaction as he broached the subject for the umpteenth time. “With a name like Lovelock, this town” he said gesturing through the windshield “has to be the Grand Central for hookers. So keep an eye out for the local cathouses. They always have names ending in ranch like Mustang Ranch and Cottontail Ranch.” by April Michelle Bratten There is a sly whistling in the hallway. It keeps on And each night, It will not be consoled by John Holten William Day tears the foil from around the bottle’s neck, locks it between his feet and screws the opener down into the already disintegrating cork. Then one of his favourite sounds: phop! A light wind, lined with the whisper of salt, makes the plastic bag containing the rest of his picnic flap and wrap itself around his leg. He pours some of the wine he bought in Bremen into the paper cup he acquired off the beautifully helpful girl below deck, unwraps his sandwich and toasts the late-evening sky and the disappearing land. Making its way out of Kiel’s harbour the ferry banks to the portside, the line of the helm dipping wildly to William’s right. A slow turn out in the North Sea, one big and invisible mechanical enterprise. His picnic tastes as good as he hoped it would: he draws off huge chunks of the cheese sandwich, gulping down wine in between. He is drunk and full before he has time to think about it. Putting his shoes up on the seat across from him, he notices it is a container full of life jackets. He looks up at the angle of the helm. Slowly it readjusts itself to the stability of land and water, like a giant bobbing cork. William picks up the French made, proudly bought in France tire-bouchon, and unscrews the cork, dis-impaling it. He lets it weigh in his hand a moment before hauling it into the dark abyss that is opening up around the ferry. The surge of white violence, the troubled journey awaiting the innocent plug once it meets the sea; his mind rests on this, the suck and pull, for a moment or two. Then he wonders: who would have the key to that box if the whole thing did tip over? Wouldn’t fancy my chances of getting a life jacket in time. Rescue is always in somebody else’s hands. Strangers not to be trusted. People who tell themselves stories all the time, tales in which they appear as heroes. But they’re not, William thinks. Is he a hero because he’s trying to change his life in the face of planetary, climate change? Not at all, he’s just overpaid in expensive Norwegian kroner. The world needs more heroes, he thinks, normal and everyday heroes. He laughs out loud and on the upper deck, by the edge of the helipad (in case of rescue, in case of catastrophe) there is nobody around to hear him. by Rita Dahl He dipped his brush into red (villanelle) He dipped his brush into red Critic always wore yellow, Did he need to make reference to a The question struck an infirm hand, to alter something in the arts |
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