THE MITT • by Chris Edwards
The small boy, undersized for his age, scuffled at the ground with the toe of his rubber cleat. It was the bottom of the last inning and his team clung tenaciously to a one run lead — but their opponents… Continue Reading
Author: Every Day Fiction
CAGED • by Paul A. Freeman
The ‘cage’, as Jambo Mine’s lift is referred to, judders to a halt midway up the mineshaft. Suspended from a single thick cable, it’s surrounded by utter darkness. The floor and the ceiling of the cage are two meters square,… Continue Reading
BEETROOT • by Stella Jay
Abel’s blood cast a blight upon the land. After he buried his brother, Cain could wrest from the soil nothing but beets. All that he planted — wheat, barley, even grapes — came up beets that stained his hands and… Continue Reading
SPRING BREAK THAT WASN’T • by Niles Reddick
It wasn’t Spring. The temperature fluctuated from one day to the next, teasing us with sunshine and warm weather, and the next day, temps plummeted and froze again. The cherry tree, azaleas, and buttercup blossoms turned brown and withered. One… Continue Reading
EXECUTION STYLE • by Raymond Fortunato
I like simple stories. Heroes who are always heroic. Villains who stay villains. People aren’t that way. You can be with people for decades; think you know them and then suddenly find out what you thought you saw wasn’t there.… Continue Reading
MAGNOLIA • by Wendy A. Warren
It’s time to divide and transplant the winter-dormant residents of Bellamy’s garden. The shovel and she work as one: slice and step and scoop. Gloves on, hair back. Low sun slants across the sleeping plants. A fern over there will… Continue Reading
DESCENT OF THE SERPENT • by Lynn M. Rice
“Pimple?” he asked. “Um, yeah.” Her fingers lowered from where she had been idly pinching the pressure point on her chin. “I guess all this sunscreen doesn’t agree with my skin.” Maia ground her teeth and shaded her eyes, gazing… Continue Reading
THE FEAST OF ST. JOE • by William Hawkins
Joe thought we should dress up as the Holy Family for a Christmas card. “Since nobody knows who Eli’s dad is.” That kept him in the doghouse well into January. I don’t know why Mom got so bent up about… Continue Reading
A DEATH IN G MAJOR • by Cailín Frankland
I press A7 on the vending machine — it shudders as my Mountain Dew gets stuck in the contraption, grunts like an old man coming in his sock. Its LED lights flicker as I kick the damn thing one, two,… Continue Reading
FULL OF THE BLARNEY • by Diana Campbell
He was full of the blarney, this one. The nuns had taught us how to fend off the amorous advances of boys but they hadn’t really told us how to cope with our own desires. Maybe they thought we didn’t… Continue Reading