Goodreads
del.icio.us
from Ka
by Stephen MacLeod, March 2010
"And you know what the worst of it is? This is what women want from men. They like it when they act—act—that way toward each other. Men get points from women the more they can show they are snared in these acts. It's a sign that indicates to them that you are willing to do some pointless harm to yourself or some other man just to even get a girl to look at you. Imagine how you could manipulate someone as duped as that."
Camera
by Melanie Browne, March 2010
"It was one of those religious channels. He was speaking into the camera about how much better a chicken pot pie is when it is made with lard. How it had made such a difference in his life and how he told his friends about it, encouraging them to make chicken pot pies with a lard crust. His eyes were lit up in a sort of religious fervor and his animated hands were gesturing wildly."
Photo Op
by Michael Andreoni, March 2010
'A sense of fatalism enveloped him, as though he was mounted on rails and must go forward, despite long experience at predicting the wreck at journey's end. A sense of "might as well get this over with now so Margie and I can fight about it and get that over with, and then maybe life can go on."'
"Delinquent," "Creation," and "Could Have Been the Ocean, Could Have Been the Sea"
by Rich Ives, March 2010
"The instructor inside was offering free mistakes for signing up for the course. The distance between the surface and the deeper implications was on vacation or I might have overachieved. I never did figure out what the course was about, but then I never did take the course."
Scheherazade
by John Kuligowski, March 2010
"First and foremost, this is not a story about your home, wherever that is. Secondly, America and Iraq are the same place. Now that you've taken in the preliminaries, the story can begin, but like a bad dream, one of those that seem to run on an eternal loop. That way you'll know the story like your left hand. Familiar terrain, you'll think. And that's a good thing. That's the nature of stories and bad dreams."
The Demotivational Speaker
by Mark Robinson, January 2010
'"Better yet, who missed the birth of their first child?" The small groups they cower before him while he smiles that bleached-teeth-smug-smile of the all powerful. When nobody seems brave enough to answer, he gives a little shrug to the disaffected and asks who of them have actually managed to fool another living individual into being with them long enough to convince them of a relationship, let alone conceive a child?'
The Healer
by Chuck Taylor, January 2010
"The healer was a woman in her seventies. She always kept her white hair covered with a handkerchief. Despite her age, she would stay up all night treating high school boys who had been injured in football games. She never asked for money but would accept gifts or cash. One time an older man—presumably a grandfather—left three chickens in a small coop."
Lake Waves
by Len Kuntz, January 2010
'He raised the knife. He felt stronger than he was—bold and forbidden and masculine. "Have a good dream," he said. He could be pensive and moody, theoretical as well. "Hell, it doesn't matter," he said, "your dreams are lake waves, you can't control them."'
How I Lived with Myself without Going into Remission
by George Sparling, January 2010
'I walked through the aisles, picking my standard meat, fish, veggies, dairy and canned goods. As if on autopilot, I heard both employees and customers say out loud the very words I spoke in my mind. "I didn't know my debit card wasn't valid," a man said, his baggy trousers identical to mine." "Tom Petty's 'I won't back down', how it won't quit, how I can't help it," said a woman, grasping a tomato against her ear.'
The Cholos
by Luis Rivas, December 2009
"The cholos stop in front of the laborers. The more talkative one says, "¿Que honda, páisa?" not speaking to any of the laborers in particular as he takes a gulp from the 40-ouncer, his eyes glossy and red, rhythmically tapping the side of his leg as if keeping the beat with some song in his head. The other cholo is quiet, constantly and aggressively biting the inside of his mouth."
Lemma
by Adam Moorad, December 2009
"((I scrape along the road-line, side-walking.) My toes are tongues. I taste. I count. (Degrees. Minutes. Seconds.)) I read, twelve degrees, ten minutes and thirty seconds on a toothbrush billboard. ((I am in the city.) I have been there for thirty days, numbering problems from my slanted angles only.) I see buildings making cement tubes, turning sharply in different directions. There are hollow whispers."
Modern Smut
by Joel Van Noord, December 2009
"It's just, sometimes, no fault of anyone really, it's just that sometimes, perhaps because you were playing beach volleyball with the catering crew, but sometimes, and I suppose it's the bacteria's fault really, but if pressed I would have to say the bacteria is in there and well it's not really going to win the most floral smell award, unless of course it's one of the flowers that smells, like, well, rotting flesh..."
Musings of a Nature Documentary Enthusiast
by Marcelo Worsley, December 2009
"What, then, does the calf's suffering signify? Does the Mandrill ape enjoy freedom? Or should the cameraman have shot the beast? Perhaps our senses deceive us: animals are inanimate projections, immune to pain and emotion. The calf, the primate, are only symbols for the meek and the bestial. If so, Creation is an elaborate hoax that most of us will never understand, an allegory intended for the rabidly intelligent or the deranged..."
War, O Yes!
by Paul Kavanagh, December 2009
"Yesterday they hung cowards, traitors and the insane. During any War the number of insane goes through the roof. They hung the cowards, traitors and the insane from lampposts, shop signs, and traffic lights. They used shoelaces, cheese wires, skipping ropes. They lined them up and one by one hung them as though they were decorations. Not one complained, not one objected as being used as an ornament."
Staring at the Sun
by Hunter Stern, November 2009
"What if evolution reroutes instinct through the brain stem so that without confirmation based on a logical appraisal, desire remains just that, powerless and unfulfilled. The future mind would finally have an absolute veto over the heart, having evolved to distrust it after a million years of heartache. Seth, eyes welling with tears, but not from sadness, imagined a world filled with blinded groping figures navigating by smell, touch and sound."
Goldie's Lie Over: A Eulogy
by KJ Hannah Greenberg, November 2009
"Small, spangled creature, whose seas once flickered with sunlight and fins, why did you ever swim in my coke bottle only to arrive belly-up? Beyond normal snatches of comprehension, my mind can't grasp the meaning of your stone-like mass in my beverage holder."
Fanfare for a Soldier
by Randy Lowens, November 2009
'Some say that familiarity breeds contempt. Perhaps. The world at large saw John as The Psycho Vet, a man who was "still in Saigon", a snarling cur worthy of a wide berth if little else. He was unpopular, but he was feared. Contrary to this image, I came to know an old drunk who was hopelessly dependent on his "medication", a man who longed to be comforted by a God he feared to face. I came to know a bitter dreamer who was scorned in love, resentful, yet who imagined that romance lay just across the horizon.'
Superheroes
by Gabrielle Sierra, November 2009
"I must have nodded off just then, but when I woke up we were swaying back and forth by the back tables. My feet were at least five inches from the ground. She was warm but coated in a cool sweat and it felt like flying, like what it must feel like to go through clouds. No one else was dancing, and I wasn't sure if my arms were pinned to my sides or just heavy with booze."
A Few Lost Pages
by Jeremy Hight, November 2009
"I thought of the frozen guy for a second again. Those notes were more interesting than any of the crap I made the first few years after school before I got busy and he had them on burger wrappers. I took two classes alone on how to mount your little treasured crumbs properly and my great works had the equivalent value of a letter of his text on a box top."
Best Practices for Losers
by Jon Alan Carroll, November 2009
"He applied for a job as a gas station cashier, doesn't know why, the man asks, Why would someone with your experience want to be a cashier, Need a job, George said, but the guy said he needed somebody who wanted to be a cashier, someone with a passion for customer service, and old George started laughing, he knew it wasn't right, couldn't help it, so ridiculous, he used to supervise five men and now what—a passion for correct change?"
an excerpt from Moon on Mandara
by Helena Joshee, November 2009
'Brahma then rose and got back on Fifth Avenue and walked till 50th where he turned into a side-door of Saint Patrick's, lit a taper, put a dime in the box for charities and prayed for inspiration. "He wants dames," Brahma addressed the editor mentally. "He shall get a dame. Such a one as he has never seen." Then arose the world-enchanting Mohini.'
an excerpt from Troglodyte Rose
by Adam Lowe, October 2009
"I sigh. Time for action. This is the real thing, not a simulation. There are no drugs, no dreams, no control. But Octavia's holding a rifle which she passes my way.
"'Thanks, Dandelion Girl.' The metal feels warm where her fingers have been. She's fluffed it up, stroked it to arousal. I can feel it ready in my grasp."
Winner of the Buns and Barbs Flash Fiction Contest
by Catfish McDaris, with a photograph by Belinda Subraman, October 2009
On September 8th, Buns and Barbs presented this photograph by Belinda Subraman and asked readers to submit flash fiction based on Belinda Subraman's photo. We present our favorite flash here.
In Treatment
by Michael Cuglietta, September 2009
"I don't want to be in bed by eleven. I don't want to only drink on the weekends and even then no more than two beers a night. I don't want to wear expensive wool pants from fancy department stores with "dry clean only" labels. I don't want to eat three square meals a day, with five servings of fruits or vegetables. I refuse to run three miles a day five days a week."
My Boogren
by Ryan Undeen, September 2009
"'I ain't sad no more, boogren,' I said, 'I'm angry like Hell-fire.' I'd heard that Hell-fire in church and it sounded real hot and mean and I was feelin real hot and mean. The moss stopped laughing and I heard an old dead limb snap and come fallin to the ground. That old boogren was standing right up in front of me next thing I knew."
A Sort of Highway
by David Manning, September 2009
"I went and did a bad thing. I took a wallet off this man getting into his car, and worried as I was that he might start yelling, raise an alarm or something, I hit him, and when he was down on all fours and coughing up, I kicked him good a couple more times. Then I got scared and took off, pocketing the cash, tossing the wallet. That man was no millionaire, let me tell you. Twenty-three bucks, twenty-three dollars in folding money, that's what I got for the trouble."
The Animal Torture Years
by Edmond Caldwell, September 2009
"Colin enjoyed holding back his dumps. He liked the pressure the turd made in the bowel and against the sphincter, the way the sphincter had to be clenched against the contractions of the bowel that wanted, in the natural course of things, to plop the turd out into the toilet bowl. It reminded Colin of an animal that needed to be let out. As the pressure got more intense so did the excitement, a kind of thrilling fear that the turd might escape like a bad animal..."
Feelin' Cheap This Morning
by Robert Walton, September 2009
"Very stupid. They want me to think a delivery truck come down here? A truck come down here and dropped a big old bag of buns right on my doorstep? There ain't no McDonald's within miles of here. Nothin' but street kids around here, not many of them since the last sweep. The gangs don't even recruit here no more. It's just a kill zone. A kill zone for them and the ricos. Not the cops. They don't care."
Mission to Dreamland
by Robert Ciesla, July 2009
"No Marine should have to beg or lie for help. They warned Michael about the questionnaires having right and wrong answers. This still made him clench his fists."
King of the Gunmen
by Stephen Muret, July 2009
"I waited for the Olympics for a long time. When they finally arrived I got my stand ready and I began. First, there were the old ladies. You always start with the old ladies because they're so slow-moving and nearly impossible to miss. You get a couple of good old ladies and then everyone notices and everything really starts to wiggle."
At the Beautician's
by Tom Bradley, July 2009
"The catalogue went on. Dead. Suicide. In America for further study. Dead. Dead. Joined the hooligan classes. Perhaps in Qinghai death camp eating paper. Executed. In solitary for life. Suicide. Prison. Abroad. Vanished. Disappeared. Death camp. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. Soon it just took an almost bored nod of the head to indicate the same, or similar answers."
The Overpass
by Dean Kisling, July 2009
"The horror of the overpass is that it is so utterly ordinary, business as usual, another day in the life, accepted and taken for granted in all its grotesque ugliness, its assault on the senses and the world. All these strange floating containers of sheet metal and glass, and these creatures with their arms raised like zombies, with steering wheels in their fists, with their eyes pointed straight ahead..."
Whatever Happened to the Man with the Familiar Face?
by Rion Amilcar Scott, July 2009
"People like you, young folks, think stories of The Great Insurrection are just some fairytales. It don't make you proud that even before your grandfather was born, Ol' Cigar and them ran away and killed some white folks and got away with it? They built this black paradise."
The Hit on Ved Shurston
by K.M. Dersley, June 2009
"The Daily Crow had a full page about the incident of the night before. According to a local minister, the rumpus at the Final Anchor had started as a well-meaning protest against the Children of Ganymede but been taken over by a number of churchgoing 'bully boys, young and old' who were now in grave danger of expulsion from the flock."
There's a Frame in There
by Tyke Johnson, June 2009
"After two months things happen. You lose all confidence after two months, my brother warned. You'll want her back. Then you'll stay awake and figure out a way to get her back. Then you'll get her back and you'll hate yourself even more when you end it once again."
A Gripa
by Violetta Tarpinian, June 2009
"Prices have swelled, though, we discover. No more cheap brandy and a soda from the fountain for five bucks, everything's martinis now. Does Blake still work here? Sorry, no. She was too old, he doesn't say but has it written on his face as plain as day, and you Sir and Ma'am are old, too, you should be home in bed."
Mass Buildabearia
by Poe Johnson, June 2009
"Children are inherently evil. This is a known fact to anyone who has ever spent any time with, or as, a child. Quite simply, they lack the basic human characteristics that are required for a person to be considered decent under any set of unbiased calculations. They are devoid of culpability, conscience and consideration for others..."
Removed
by Ryan Dilbert, June 2009
"His glare now is one that precedes a stabbing. His dementia is now a beacon shining from his open mouth. And I can smell the pungent odor of rum on his tongue. He is insane and intoxicated, paranoid and in close proximity to me. That is a mix I want no part of. My knees are wobbling. Sweat trickles down the back of my calves."
"The Window" and "Freedom of Spoke"
by G. Haritharan, May 2009
"On the road I walked several paces with a mind of a matter of fact. Slavery was the subject of the last book I read. At least, those pages I had read. No longer I wished to continue the monotony. Too much melodrama mixed with facts. Not enough fiction. The creativity of the mind. If I wanted periods of history as bland fish sticks; I'd eat and read a tome (or two) published by Macmillan and sold to me by Blackwell's."
an excerpt from Murmur
by Simon Friel, May 2009
"It was an offer that was also a challenge. A challenge that Paz didn't look ready for. It wasn't intended as a challenge, it was just that John had lost his coke perspective a long time ago."
