"Don't get primer on that," I replied. I think I have painted more than a hundred rooms in my life. I attack the task as I do all tasks, like line drives. Painting in the nude was the best way to avoid washing acrylic off another T-shirt, even if I have dozens. If you travel to Amsterdam and you can not afford the Renoir or the Natchez triple dresser, a T-shirt emblazoned with green people boffing doggy style can substitute as a souvenir. Plus, I run in a lot of 10Ks. This activity nets you shin splints, free orange juice and free T-shirts. Allison and I run them once a month. We go to class together, bar hop together and run together. Last week we entered the Santa Anita Run. Someone miscalculated the length, the race was .75 miles longer than it should have been. When you strategise for 6.2, 6.95 takes a toll. You've spent all you had before the last mile and so you dodder along in the end, like a rented pony. They still owe you the T-shirt however, no matter how late you cross the finish line.
]]>During her waking moments, she tried to identify the cause, to concentrate on the nub, but her mind was in spasm, convulsing with thoughts, moments and memories but unable to focus on any one thing. Archaic, antiquated. No longer of relevance, she thought. Mrs H closed her eyes and recounted the books from the well-stocked library of her childhood home.
She slept again, eventually, and woke at dawn feeling thirsty and vaguely bereft. Getting herself out of the lofty bed was more of an effort than usual, and she averted her eyes from the looking glass as she always did. She had been almost beautiful once and didn't need to be reminded of a face consumed and robbed by lonely old age and secret obsession. She cleaned her teeth for longer than usual, focusing on nothing except the swirl of blood in the bowl when she spat.
]]>"Don't know exactly, but I feel it," he answered, distracted. The Red Sox were on the radio. The commentator's staccato monotone crackled over the hoarse breath of the crowd.
"Feel it. What do you mean by that, Dad?"
"I feel it, David, right here," he punched the center of his stomach. "When Williams smacks a homer, he doesn't feel contact, his gut just knows. Same as me about a boat, I know I'd love one—you would too, holding the wheel, wind in your hair, it just feels right, doesn't it?"
]]>Also look for Three Cheers and a Tiger Writing Contest winning stories by Nathaniel Tower, Brian Behr Valentine & Amanda Divine.
This issue's Best of the Boards winner is Aaron M. Wilder.
Congratulations to all!
]]>My first thought after I'd had time for the news to absorb was that I was sorry that he hadn't got his acceptance before he died. Almost as quickly came a second thought: but isn't it great that he went out the way every writer presumably wants to—writing and submitting until the very end?
]]>"That's ridiculous," I say. The latest in a string of ridiculous things in this nowhere village. Like the football team only plays against itself and I have to be up making breakfast at 5:30, because our school's an hour away and the bus, according to the guys, takes even longer in the winter on account of the plow attached to its grill. "Santa goes everywhere."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm eighteen."
"You're wrong, Graham. He doesn't come here," she insists. "Ask your nickelback friends."
]]>She only keeps the bed—the same uncomfortable one she's slept on since childhood—because it is high enough to house the box, which fits snugly beneath the tarnished frame, which holds the coiled springs, which lie beneath the torn mattress, all of it covered by the quilt hand-sewn by her grandmother.
She takes comfort in these layers. They are all that muffle the voice when it calls. Teasing, pleading, wounding. She tries to ignore it, has faced the sofa in the opposite direction so she doesn't have to look at it. Still, the loft is sparsely furnished. It is easily heard or seen from anywhere in the apartment.
She used to worry that visitors would ask questions.
Luckily, no one has ever come.
]]>Press your ear to the ice under Blood River Bridge. If you listen closely, you can still hear them trying to scream as the freezing water rushes into their lungs. You can still hear their tiny fists pounding on the bottom of the ice, and their fingernails scratching at it. If you stare through the ice long enough, you might see their faces—black, dead eyes—gaping mouths. But don't freeze with fear…they might break through and pull you in with them, pull you all the way down to the bottom of the icy river, where it's pitch black forever.
]]>Check out the complete list of authors, titles and journals (& pre-order your copy!) at Dzanc Books.
]]>