LITERARY FICTION
OCTOBER 2018
ICE PLUNGE
MAYA SOKOLOVSKI
~
It’s cold. I couldn’t possibly be here, but there we are: by Lake Wilcox, in Sensei’s backyard. It’s dusk and December in Aurora, Canada. The sun is a crimson smear in the west. It’s minus-19 Celsius but a breeze makes it feel like minus-25. Sensei, my fellow judoka, and I run onto the ice. We’re in swimsuits and boots. Their winter coats and my fur parka hang on a coat rack, which Sensei’s wife had set out earlier on the snow-covered lawn for our convenience.
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SEPTEMBER 2018
HER FAVORITE PART OF WINTER
KEVIN WHITE
~
"Is the fire hot, sir?"
He does not get the reference. He smiles anyway. She sips hot chocolate. He sips at wine. A stray branch taps on the glass, wants to come inside, but is not allowed. He puts another log onto the fire. She loves quoting Joyce, but knows he won't get it, so she has to stop for now.
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HER FAVORITE PART OF WINTER
KEVIN WHITE
~
"Is the fire hot, sir?"
He does not get the reference. He smiles anyway. She sips hot chocolate. He sips at wine. A stray branch taps on the glass, wants to come inside, but is not allowed. He puts another log onto the fire. She loves quoting Joyce, but knows he won't get it, so she has to stop for now.
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AUGUST 2018
RECYCLED HEART
ANNE MCMILLAN
~
The fishing boat is bleached from the sun, battered from the sea. I rub my calloused fingers along the rim where the green paint is flaking. The broken cabin door, unlatched, swings on its hinges. The floorboards are warped, the nets need mending. Crusted with barnacles, the hull begs a good scraping, and a brown tarp that covers the deck is mottled from the sun. The rigging is in disarray, the ropes are frayed. Tethered to the pier, the boat shifts in the wind like an animal restrained; it drifts away, only to be tugged and jerked back again.
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MARCH 2018
CORN - A TREAT
WILLIAM CASS
~
Before leaving the house, Gertrude checked in on her husband, Carl. He was lying on his back on their bed in a sleeveless T-shirt, pale blue boxers, and black socks. His eyes were closed, and the blinds were shut against the late afternoon light. A fan in the corner moved back and forth blowing the hot Indian Summer air. The radio on the bedside table was turned low to a baseball game; she didn’t know if he was listening to it or not. She looked past him to the back of the closet door where the outfits they’d picked out for their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary dinner hung. That had been two weeks ago, but Carl hadn’t felt up to going.
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CORN - A TREAT
WILLIAM CASS
~
Before leaving the house, Gertrude checked in on her husband, Carl. He was lying on his back on their bed in a sleeveless T-shirt, pale blue boxers, and black socks. His eyes were closed, and the blinds were shut against the late afternoon light. A fan in the corner moved back and forth blowing the hot Indian Summer air. The radio on the bedside table was turned low to a baseball game; she didn’t know if he was listening to it or not. She looked past him to the back of the closet door where the outfits they’d picked out for their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary dinner hung. That had been two weeks ago, but Carl hadn’t felt up to going.
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DECEMBER 2017
CINNAMON
JEFF FLEISCHER
~
The very rhythm of the word always resurrected Grandfather’s stories.
“Cinnamon.”
It had been a quest for this spice that first enticed his ancestors to the sea, luring a sextet of Dutch brothers from the quiet toil of village life to a perilous existence aboard a ship circumnavigating Europe.
Only four of the boys had lasted the full junket to Ceylon. They lost one of their brethren to a collapsing mainsail in a storm off Gibraltar, and another counted among the two dozen men felled by dysentery and left to sea off the Horn of Africa.
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CINNAMON
JEFF FLEISCHER
~
The very rhythm of the word always resurrected Grandfather’s stories.
“Cinnamon.”
It had been a quest for this spice that first enticed his ancestors to the sea, luring a sextet of Dutch brothers from the quiet toil of village life to a perilous existence aboard a ship circumnavigating Europe.
Only four of the boys had lasted the full junket to Ceylon. They lost one of their brethren to a collapsing mainsail in a storm off Gibraltar, and another counted among the two dozen men felled by dysentery and left to sea off the Horn of Africa.
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OCTOBER 2017
THE TESTAMENT OF PEARL
CHARLES LEIPART
~
I brought you your moccasins, Mz’sus. I had to take three trains, two buses, and a gypsy cab to get here. I thought you'd be missing your slippers. A chair? Thank you, but no, my leg be just fine when I'm not carryin’ your heavy laundry. But all this cold and rain we be having, been like the devil on my arthritis, and my daughter Bernice's been down sick with the Beijing flu, and there's been no heat in our building since the landlord's been took away.
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