Atisole / O, Dawn
by Adolfo Alzuphar
He is a painter of beauty. He is an expert at friendship. At his table, he promised to tell me a story that would be a transcription of reality, that I’d lost my way.
Sunday Stories: “Keep Ticking”
Keep Ticking
by Alan Gartenhaus
A sore back didn’t stop Yelena from smiling as she wrapped Mr. Phillips’ arms around her neck and lifted him from the bed. Though he had lost weight, the dampened sheet made sliding him to the edge difficult, and the plastic mattress protector resisted, adding its complaint. She lowered him onto the shower chair and wheeled him into the stall. She’d run the hot water to warm the bathroom and had towels at the ready as he was easily chilled. Yelena had long overcome any shyness while bathing residents. She knew massaging their fragile bodies with soap and water soothed them.
Sunday Stories: “They Got Away”
They Got Away
by Sara Schaff
The couple had come to see the used car. Donna was showing the car because her brother, who owned the car, could not be there to show it. He was in a nursing home, and she was the one to put him there.
Sunday Stories: “from Freelance”
from Freelance
by Kevin M. Kearney
Simon waited out the next morning’s pre-lunch lull in the Italian Market, observing the vendors along 9th Street hocking food, fish, and unlicensed Eagles merch. John the Bag Man waltzed by the Subaru and waved, showing off his blistered palms. A Vietnamese family inspected the produce stands’ vegetables, disappointed to find that nearly all of them were already spoiled. Blood-stained butchers from Cannuli’s and Esposito’s loitered on their respective corners, smoking cigarettes and talking shit on the mayor.
Sunday Stories: “Punk”
Punk
by Francis Levy
I started drinking Beefeaters, by myself, grabbing the bottle from the burnished wood foldup bar in the den. My face was hot from the gin which I swigged down as fast as I could, taking one last swallow right from the bottle.
Sunday Stories: “Skeleton”
Skeleton
by Greg Mulcahy
Without a back story, Driscoe said, there was nothing to hook the purity of thought to.
Problem of the moment.
Flicker of Driscoe’s thought.
Sunday Stories: “Vital Information”
Vital Information
by Angela Townsend
There are people who love to tell you the bad news. Forty-nine percent of them work for the weather service. They steeple their fingers in an underground lair. Rivulets of drool race down their chins at the first clap of thunder. If they see a cloud the size of a man’s hand, they inform you that tornadoes will leap out of the dark and grab you by the rump. The eschaton is imminent.
Sunday Stories: “Mommy’s Business”
Mommy’s Business
by Bob Johnson
Her mother was in danger of “crashing,” the doctor told Kat, if she didn’t haul herself out of bed and do her rehab. The old lady had broken a hip a month earlier, and her urinary tract infections—though they responded well enough to antibiotics—returned like clockwork the instant the meds stopped.