An Hour Or So
How predictable you are, early winter rain. And how swiftly you cast a vast blanket of poignancy, mist and biting chill onto this entire city.

The arrondissements are swept up in the heady existence of their own beauty, as life plays out to the distinctive notes of hope laced with sorrow.

Here in the Latin Quarter, whiling some time on Le Petiti Chatelet's porch, I look out at a Seine quite disinterested in this whole affair of life, as it were. It flows, and no more.

The clock on the north-east corner of the Palais de Justice facade clears its throat. Chime, I whisper, chime, you fool. Chime away with that fleur de lys that graces your tip.

Because soon she will be here. And arm in arm we'll dance, later tonight, in the wild beauty of the Bataclan.

If you would only...

Chime.

✉

Credits

fiction
&
artwork
by
Siddharth Dasgupta
Facebook/leavesfromabook
Twitter@Siddha3th

©
creator

Event Horizon
An event horizon is the boundary of a black hole, you said, the region from which no escape is possible.

A scientist and physician, you filled my head with Doppler shifts and DNA helices. When we fought, we collided like tectonic plates. But always I'd 
return, unable to resist your gravitational pull.

Until the day they found you in the theatre corridor with pupils so small that all the light had escaped. They resuscitated you with naltrexone. That’s the antidote for morphine.

I’ll never do it again, you promised. 

So I ignored the fermenting scent of your breath, ignored the torpid calm that fell over you when you had fentanyl floating through your veins – because for a short time, I had you back. 

I should have known what would happen when I fell for a supernova. 

There’s no escape from a black hole. I’ll forever fall into your infinite curves.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Eileen Merriman
@MerrimanEileen

art by
Nod Ghosh
@nodghosh

©
creators

New Bike
Rachel zips up her jacket against the autumn chill. She slips one hand between Ronnie’s arm and his warm body.

‘This one’s the business,’ he says. ‘Full carbon fibre fork, tapered frame, lightweight aerodynamic wheels, eleven-speed electronic gear set. She’ll ride like the wind.’

Rachel smiles, and imagines him crossing the line in front of the Arc de Triomphe, crowds banging the boarded barriers with their gimmicky inflatable batons, his arms held high in victory, balancing on the slippery paving stones of the Paris street.

‘That’ll be at least ten grand,’ Ronnie continues.

The streetlight wobbles in a gust of wind, showering them with a curtain of hanging raindrops.

‘Yep, this one’s the real business,’ he murmurs.

Rachel walks to the van and slides open the door while Ronnie steadies the bolt cutters over the thick chain lock.

✉

Credits

fiction
&
artwork
by
Louise Mangos
louisemangos.com
@LouiseMangos

©
creator

There are no Women in our House
There are no women in our house. 
Uncle Allen tells me that women burn
kind of like alcohol
but not in a good way. 
He says they burrow right into your stomach
right into your core
and make homes
out of bone dust and old food
and stay there.

There are no women in our house. 
Grandpa Walt tells me that women sting
with sharp nails and red lips
they'll kiss you my boy, 
they'll kiss you 
and you'll fall into a pit full of ghosts
and you'll feel like lighter fluid
and your tears will smell like gasoline.

There are no women in our house. 
There is no one to make our beds
or cook our food
or to clean up after us;
we have a hoot

but at night 
I hear them crying softly in their 
stained bedsheets.

There are no women 
in 
our house.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Iskandar Haggarty
@iskyhaggarty36

artwork by
Retna Ningtias C. Rehajeng
@oodega

©
creators

Doggy Paddling
Blood red, it rose. It's not real, she tells herself. The pounding, pressing against her temples, but inside it's a deeper, lower ache. Heat agitates imagined slights. Why, instead, can't she see well-intentioned flashes of beauty in everyday gestures?

Rob calls it, "purse-missing-time", the jest not so funny as she scours her bag at the checkout and feels the cashier's eyes burning, burning. 

All this month's small failures pile into one: the misconstrued email, the dispute with her daughter's teacher, the cat throwing up on her favourite rug because she hadn't placed the rubbish fully inside the bin, and the complaint at the swimming baths when she doggy paddled into someone else's lane. She back splashes through each second.

It will dwindle. She clings to the thought like a person hugging an inflatable. Wait for the storm to pass. Breathe normally in the hiatus.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Shirley Golden
@shirl1001

image by
Maria Herbert-Liew
@MHL_tweets

©
creators

Ducks
When the doctor came to ask why, Judy said, it was because of the ducks. She closed her eyes but their bodies were still there, wings flailing as they attempted to fly off the bitumen. 

The doctor said, sign here, on the dotted line, so we can give you some blood.

Judy said, there was blood on the dotted line. Blood and shit and – grey stuff. She doesn’t have words for the dying-crying noises the ducks were making; their wing-beats, thickening the air like clotted cream; the hot scent of tar and blood and shit that has settled in her hindbrain and thrown her off balance ever since.

The doctor said, something else must be wrong. People don’t slit their wrists because some ducks got run over. 

But they’re in here, Judy said, her hands fluttering around her head. They keep dying. I don’t know how to make it stop.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Eileen Merriman
@MerrimanEileen

image by
Louise Mangos
louisemangos.com

©
creators

Lest We Forget
In summer, Magda always has breakfast on her balcony overlooking Vienna’s St Stephan’s, and reads her home-delivered paper. She’s worked hard for the good life and now, recently retired with a good pension, she enjoys all the culture her adopted city offers: opera, concerts, coffee and Strudel at Demel’s, outside the tourist rush, of course.

Magda doesn’t like to dwell on the past. It’s the here and now she loves. But the news has been heating up in the wake of the recent heatwave. They’re lying on the train tracks at Bicske, screaming “not here”. 

“Not here.” The words slip from the page and morph into her mind. “My home is no longer here.” It is 1956. Magda is preparing to flee. 

Magda stares down at the buskers on St Stephen’s square. She kneads her fingers as a solitary tear drops onto her wrinkled hand.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Sylvia Petter
@Mblobs

art by
Michèle Karbassioun
www.mjk-art.com

©
creators

In the Hormone Doc's Parking Lot
95 degrees in August. I hate offices. A finch lands on the fence while mom resumes being poked, pressed, and prodded. Her hot flashes cooled with topical creams, blood ebbing at low tide. Insomnia battled with herbs, yoga, and Mantram.

Planks nailed side by side to kill views. Train whistle makes the finch vanish. Comings and goings synchronized, the SUVs taking turns blocking my breeze. Elders arrive with children steering. Histories unload. Women prepare to become ghosts, their albums destined for landfill.

A swallowtail sips from a blossom as a Lexus parks. Timber bamboo shadows the western edge of the lot. Patient canes her way out of the Lexus. She is the first woman without a companion. The wind turns the grove into a schooner with green sails, the leaves cracking like wet linen in a typhoon. The woman gazes up and smiles.

✉

Credits

fiction
&
artwork
by
Kirby Wright
kibs33.wix.com
Twitter@kibs33

©
creator

The Gulls
Hey lady hey lady hey!

Helen, in the elbow crook of the bay, and the boys in the boat crying for her, their voices high and hoarse on the evening air. The tide mouths the toes of her trainers and she ignores them, like they're more of the cawing seagulls, one and the same.

Hey baby, hey!

They're coming closer aren't they, steering inland, the beer slopping in them, threatening to spill out. The ends of their cigarettes bright as little suns. They go to war tomorrow, they sing. They wear their camouflage already.

Give us a kiss lady, give us a taste, go on. Come aboard for our last night of freedom.

She rests her foot on the side of the boat as it reaches her. Smiles, because it costs nothing, no other reason. Pushes them back out onto the dark sea.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Abi Hynes
@AbiFaro

image by
Zowie Green
www.zowiegreen.com

©
creators

Recessive Gene
Hokey Pokey ice cream starred with honeycomb the same colour as your freckles which are not freckles or kisses from angels but a spattering of love from when my elbow shook when I cooked you.

You came out like that, your name matching your hair as if you knew and sent me smoke signals via the agony of trapped wind.

Connect the dots, the exuberances of an eternity of ginger warriors; your MC1R gone wild with recession.

Your aunt and granddad and other great grandma you never met because they flew like moths in a candle, wild red and gone.

But this is love. Your dad and me. (Rr) x (Rr) equals you, (rr), curled up inside a morning book with your amber halo all tousled like so.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Jo Bradshaw
@JoBrdshw

image by
Jayne Morley
jaynemorley.tumblr.com

©
creators

Barely Happy
I loved my hair once. In the 1980's. Full of back-comb and hairspray and feather. Like Lady Di. It was my crowning-glory. At least that's what my mother said. It defined me.
	When I first shaved it off it wasn't for any noble cause. Or to draw the sympathetic looks one receives as a bald-headed woman of a certain age and status. I just did it. In front of the kitchen sink, with a draining-board full of dark green Denby. Reflected in the double-glazing that overlooked the herb garden. It was liberating. Like climbing alone and naked between crisp clean thousand thread-count bedding. And farting.
	Of course there was reaction. Speculation. Offers of support. Obviously I wasn't of 'right-mind'. Obviously. One doesn't just shave one's head. Does one? Not in my position. But in truth, I was the happiest I'd ever known.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Susan Moffat
@Suzie42Blog

image by
Jayne Morley
jaynemorley.tumblr.com

©
creators

Hopscotch
She hops from one square to the next on the grid, oblivious of the eyes, which, as dark as a sparrow’s, trace her every skip. Pert bunches, hair the colour of gingerbread, bob in the dappled sunshine. Through gappy teeth, girly giggles ripple across the playground. 

Together, apart. Together, apart, she diligently avoids the lines drawn in chalk.
 
He’s been here before. Knows that the swing affords him the best vantage point. 

Above the hemline of her skirt the milky skin looks silken, and rounded limbs draw in his gaze.
 
He eases himself off the swing, flicks his fag on the ground and inches over.

'Time to go, Katie,’ he shouts. ‘Mummy will be waiting.’

✉

Credits

fiction by
Vicky Newham
@VickyNewham

image by
Jayne Morley
jaynemorley.tumblr.com

©
creators

Blackout
It was Tim, of course, who made his way downtown through the blackout to drag me from my apartment and away from my dead, dark screen, from my undoable work and unmeetable deadlines, to walk down Yonge Street and catch the strippers on the sidewalk outside the Brass Rail, hocking glow-in-the-dark necklaces—”See for miles!” they cried—to watch the tourists getting lost in the dark, to wonder at the tiny, impossible oases of power, and to find one selling beer, a gay bar on Church, where we finally settled down and waited for the city to get started again.

✉

Credits

fiction by
Roy Schulze
drinkthenewwine.blogspot.ca

image by
Ad Hoc Fiction

©
creators

Fern and Games
After a day of it, the joke was wearing thin. They had played I Spy during the trek. Options are limited in a New Zealand forest. 

"I spy with my little eye something beginning with F," Timbo said whenever it was his go. It was always 'fern'.

They made camp in a clearing. Timbo dragged in a couple of sittable logs and padded them with fern fronds. "Ferniture," he said.

They got the fire going. Timbo dumped a load of fronds onto it, temporarily smothering the flames. The little green blades curled up and dissolved to smoke. "Fernace," he said.

It was a clear night. They sat around the fire, united in camaraderie and weariness. They gazed up at the starlit sky. Or, as Timbo called it, the "fernament".

✉

Credits

fiction by
Richard Newton
@irnewton

image by
Ad Hoc Fiction

©
creators