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."
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?"
Fanfare for a Soldier
by Randy Lowens, November 2009
"The day I met him, I was a teenager slumming around the trailer park on the far side of town, looking to buy some PCP. He was selling. He rode a motorcycle, bareheaded and single handed: Georgia had no helmet law in those days, and his left arm was in a cast. The broken arm was muscular above the bandage. Cherokee eyes squinted against the sun beneath a shaggy, salt-and-pepper mane, evocative of Charles Bronson."
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."
The Sadness Gene
by Eric Lutz, May 2009
"Worst of all, when I'm sitting in my room, when my skin is dry and I ache all over, my shoulders especially, and there is nobody calling, and I turn my phone off, there isn't anything on TV and I'm bored and I wonder, is this how everyone feels?, but I know that it isn't how everyone feels — the worst is that I won't change. I was born this way. It's in my blood."
Blacktop
by Pheadar O'Tyrrell, May 2009
"Mike and Louise are out in the front. Mike's pissed off because the car was towed away last night and it cost him two hundred bucks to get it back. Damn thing sat in front for eight years. Never did run but Louise kept stuffing things into it and it was her extra room. Nobody messed with it. Everyone knew Louise kept her stuff in it. Everyone respected her 'room'. Few months ago someone stole all the wheels and left the thing just sitting on the street like an old bone."
A Dirty Grape
by Heather Palmer, May 2009
"Michael prefers pink and black in combination. Of course I prefer yellow. So I was wrong from the beginning but I said what does it matter to Michael and he seemed to think it did. He said he needed a drink to think things through. He said, If we're gonna have this conversation. I said let's not. He said okay but we didn't have sex again for another four nights and I took that as a bad sign. Plus, the night we did have sex I wasn't wearing panties."
All Cleaned Out.
by Daniel Carpenter, May 2009
"The boxes in the hallway have 'clothes' and 'videos' daubed in thick black marker. I don't know where she got the marker from. There's alcohol in those things, can't have them around. Can't keep them in this place. All sorts of things you can't have in this house. Sharp knives, bleach, lighters."
Waiting for Calvin
by Dan Kennard, April 2009
'"Grove Pepperwood here to see Calvin Miniscule please. Or is it Maxicule? I've completely forgotten. Anyway, I'm here for the publicity, I heard this is the place to turn it all around." Grove pulled a wine sack from underneath his stained shirt and took a huge long chug, then, without capping it, placed it back underneath his shirt, another dark stain appeared, like brown blood dripping from his heart. He wasn't drinking wine.'
In Case of Apocalypse, Break Glass
by Don Hucks, April 2009
'"I'm putting together an anthology marking the ninety-ninth anniversary of Cage's birth — in 2011. I'll need two-hundred seventy-two writers, not counting myself, from all genres and sub-genres, to provide wordless tributes — wordless poems, wordless plays, wordless fiction, wordless essays, wordless whatnots and bric-a-bracs. Maybe you could contribute a story?"'
Prose Stories for Angry People
by Martin Jones, April 2009
'"What does he know about me?" I wonder. If he knew my history of violence it seems so odd that this preppy little man — this man with his cloying manner of complacent suburbia and his pseudo-gentry gym outfit — would dare sneer at me like that. I look at him — or better said gaze around him — with docility but that docility turns to dumbness in the context of his sneer...'
[ a boy in the woods], & (sixty-seven), [ a boy in the woods], and [ a boy in the woods]
short fiction by J. A. Tyler, April 2009
"Feet his feet we have a thousand million hundreds shoes and infinite feet and we can drink from them and he is parched, our boy, shoeless and toes coming going out. Our us never stops coming going out. We made a basket and imaginary fish leapt to it and we cried holding a basket of invisible fish squealing and the delight and the drop of sun."
Of Similar Circumstance
by Linda A. Lavid, April 2009
"Continuing, let me say I'm a naughty girl. Perhaps the word naughty tantalizes you with sexual innuendo and playfulness. And a naughty girl, takes it one step further to licentiousness. I choose words carefully. I don't want to become boring, predictable. It could be my demise. At any moment you could reach for the remote and flip on the television."
Behind the Dumpster and in the Sun
by Marc Gulezian, March 2009
"Melvin had been 'taken away' when the pastor of the 120th Street Methodist Church got fed up with him digging up the bushes and flowers, making barren the area that wound along the vaguely awe-inspiring slash fear-inducing, pointy-arrowed, black iron-fence that surrounded the church and its patch of grass."
Strange But True
by Norman A. Rubin, March 2009
"It was related, through the gossip of tongues, that in the time past a certain John Spector encountered the spirit of a shadowy form; the appearance of the strange phantom that completely changed his life forever. The happening occurred during a cold night with the wind blowing in fierce gusts. Haunting words were heard flowing in the wind and it chilled him to the bone."
Because of the Tupperware
by Tyke Johnson, March 2009
"There shouldn't have been so many reasons to pack up the bags. Sure there were ugly times. No bloody noses and bruised eyes though. Tears streamed for days but people are always crying. We cry when indecency makes decent in movies. When cartoon lions die. When animated robots breakdown. We cry for rain and sun and snow. So why did those tears make any difference?"
A Bar Story
by Kane K. Faucher, March 2009
"Frank and Irene were deep into their cups, that's for sure. Frank claimed to be a preacher, and was preaching enough fire and brimstone to almost play the part. He asked Irene to place all her burdens and pains upon his soul so that she could enjoy herself. Asking her to focus, he again asked for all her pains. He said he was going to use them to resolve some Oedipal problem with his mother that he said was filthy."
Louise in Afghanistan
by Louise Landes Levi, March 2009
"In Kandahar, as said, you meet the beautiful boy from the train and you and him and his traveling companions all live together in a yellow room on a side street of the city. Osama Bin Laden isn't there yet. No one is there, only the Medieval Afghanis. One day you go to a village built on stilts. All the men and all the women and all the children are living on houses built on stilts. and all the men and all the women and maybe even all the children are smoking hashish, but not you."
"Beauty," "The Lonely," and "This Island Is Not Real"
by Miriam Sagan, March 2009
"He watches through waves of heat. He knows what is going to happen. She will ask him to take her to Panda Express for early lunch. She is hypoglycemic. She will kiss him, kiss him the way no lesbian or identical twin ever has. This is the start of his life as a man, the start of trouble — both the hot and cold varieties."
Pangs of Passion
by Samdi Lazarus Musa, February 2009
"Paul wandered through the bush eating wild fruits and stealing from people's orchards. He managed to partly regain his strength. He was used to living under difficult conditions; his military training had conditioned him. He sneaked into homes stealing pots, knives, dishes, yams, and sorghum beer."
Folks, the laugh is on me
by Martin Jones, February 2009
"Now that I have finished my murder mystery/sex comedy P is for pussy, I am dedicating my time to the research of my new book: One too many pussy jokes: How my marriage ended as I got this scar on my neck. I have had to endure some real barbs down at the wharf district from the passersby who stop and watch me try out my routines."
Ana Bekoach: A Personal Liturgical Homily
by Elisha Porat, February 2009
"From within the contradictory pairing of gentleness and violence emerged the harmony of the poem that so wanted to be born. The ingredients were repulsively familiar: a shell shocked and exhausted soldier, returning home for a short and limited period of time, the threat of returning to the front not yet lifted. His hunger for a woman, the absurd pairing of his fleshly lust with his impending death echo in the poem..."
Darling
by Sam Virzi, February 2009
'Darling carried a black magic marker with him at all times, in case he saw something particularly undeclared and had to rectify such a confusing situation. Once, for example, he encountered a big, bright, ceramic mushroom bolted into the sidewalk outside his university; he wrote the word "ENTRAPMENT" in bubble letters, careful of the patterns occurring inside the black lines of each one.'
A MILF-Change
by Tim Millas, February 2009
'But last night, after he shut the light, she took his penis in her hand; and when he pushed that away, her mouth. "Don't," he said. "Then fuck me," she said. "Stop it," he said; then he was on top of her, pushing into her as if angry; and then for a miraculous ten minutes he was the lover he'd been when there was hope of making a child.'
An Imperial Message
by Stephen Charles Lester, February 2009
'"Not since Vienna has humanity negotiated such a peace," Jong-Il says. Our Secretariat picks her nose and eats it. "We shall be composed by the aria we compose."'
An Evening with Somatotax:
by Ryan Undeen, December 2008
'Just as I was about to slide off the stool and find one nearer the jiggling mid-riffs, old red busts out, "They're cutting the atom smaller and smaller — that ain't the atom, but if you make your will indivisible, you win."'
