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This book contains works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means without permission.

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978-0-9849834-0-7 (eISBN)

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CONTENTS

Fiction

Kaj Anderson-Bauer

Impressions of Death and the Afterlife 6

Roy Buck

A Flash Look 8

Brian Cooper

Crow-Boy and the Opposite of Indifference 9

Jacqueline Delibes

yOWSa 11

Shawn Duyette

The Future is So Gay 13

Richard Helmling

Mending Wall 17

Walter Holland

Unfamiliar Rooms 19

Danilo Lopez

Wanderlust 21

Monica Martinez

Chat 23

Melanie McDonald

The Purple Hat 26

Peter McKenna

No Beards for Mr. Bailey 30

Melissa Mendelson

Whispers in the Night 34

Brandon Meyers

Passing Lane 36

Brittany Newell

In the South of France We Split Hairs 37

Vincent Rendoni

Shrinking Husband 41

Allie Rowbottom

There’s Always All That 45

Jessica Simms

Networking 47

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Fiction

Louise Farmer Smith

Not Totally Passive 48

Simone Stedmon

The Study Date 49

Clare Tascio

Mouth to Mouth 52

Ling E. Teo

Notes from an Inner City School 54

Valerie Tidwell

Rainbow Gold 57

Lauren Tolbert

Job Interrogation 58

Gina Wohlsdorf

The Heartthrob 59

Meirav Zehavi

Thoughts 61

Art

Eleanor Bennett

pressed between leaves 65

Christopher Hackbarth

Snap Cut 66

Sean Lefler

Purple Hat 27

Haikus

Catherine A. MacKenzie

Summer Memories 68

Debra Mathis

A Visit to the Hen House 69

Ryan Moll

Wronged by the Circus, Again, Saying Goodbye 70

Shelley Muniz

Sierra Nevada Reverie, Daydreams and Hiking 71

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FICTION

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Impressions of Death and the Afterlife

Fiction

By Kaj Anderson-Bauer

So let’s say you die. Freak accident let’s

forever.” Pretty soon your arm begins to tire, and

say. It happens all the time. Maybe you have a heart you sort of reach out for the last little bit of eave attack. But no—you deserve better. Maybe it’s

over the front door. Then, before you have much

summer. You are painting your house. You have

awareness of what is going on, you are falling and

lived in this house for years, you and your

twisting backwards down into the sidewalk.

husband—or maybe your wife. You bought the

You don’t feel the impact of the earth. That’s

house years ago, when real estate was cheaper. Now because your neck is broken. You don’t know you you are finally

are dying yet.

getting that

All you know

mortgage paid

Then you are dead

is that you

off, and it feels

seem to be

good to have

stuck to the

assets.

sidewalk. Now you realize that you won’t be

It is one of those days in early summer

getting up again—“I am dying,” you think, and

when yard work still seems like a good idea. The

your brain starts churning wildly. You begin to

new grass is coming up, and there is a warm breeze panic. “Oh my God,” you think, “I am going to blowing. So you buy a few of those big buckets of

die.” But even though your brain is more active in

paint—yellow paint, because you are starting over.

these last moments than it has been in your entire

Starting over? Yes, you think. Today is a new day.

life, to a passerby you would already appear dead.

You pull the ladder out of the garage and

And here it comes. Your mind is like a light bulb

get to work painting your eaves. “Goodbye blue

that flares brilliantly and then quietly burns out.

trim,” you think, “it will all be yellow now. Yellow

Then you are dead. You were thinking something

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as you died, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

everything.

There’s a lack of continuity between life

Truth is, lots of people die and go on to

and death—physics is different here, for example,

do great things, even with the depression and the

and that’s just one thing. Getting off the ground

haunting memories. Some people are actually hap-

might take you ten years. You might insist that your pier here. Maybe that’s you. Maybe, once you get back is broken for that long. It’s not broken, but it

up off the ground, you will come to realize that

takes most people a few years to adjust. It takes a

painting everything yellow wouldn’t have solved

while to get used to being dead, and in some cases

your problems anyway. You might realize that you

the post-death depression and the haunting memo-

really couldn’t have started over on that summer

ries never go away. The afterlife can be a depressing day, so long ago. You can never start over; you can place, and the adjustment is different for everyone. only keep going.

It might take fifty years before you can even stand

Maybe at a certain point, you will forget everything

up again—it might take five hundred. But then,

about the few years you spent living. How long will

time is different in the afterlife too. Years will go

it take to forget? It’s hard to say. Maybe, one night,

whizzing by before you know it. Five hundred years millions of years from now, you will awake from a is pocket change here.

dream. You will be lying in bed next to the person

But see, that’s the bad news. There are good you love—still asleep beside you. You will look up bits of the afterlife as well. Your memories and

at the ceiling of your house, dark in your bedroom.

your imagination do everything here, so that opens You will hear the refrigerator turn on downstairs, up a lot of possibilities. You can float in the air for

and you will wonder if you

example, and you can breathe underwater. You also

ever really lived at all.

might meet someone here—someone to love. You

might start a family. It happens all the time. People

have built monuments of infinite height and also

infinite smallness. People have written stories so

Kaj Anderson-Bauer writes fake gossip about his friends and

long that they take thousands of years to read—but real letters to Val Kilmer. He has recently published his stories in here we have time to read them. We have time for

Melee Live and Thin Air Magazine . Kaj lives in Arkansas.

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A Flash Look

Fiction

By Roy Buck

Lincoln’s mirrored self a mismatch of two

Lincoln was superstitious, some say an

differing faces. Different shades as the President stood occultist but really he studied a deeper truth hidden in in front of the mirror. One of which was many shades plain sight. Old mirrors holding memories of every lighter, she noted. The death pallor of the Doppel-reflection captured. The president’s wife saw two

ganger’s ghastliness. An action perceived in advance?

separate distinct Lincolns in their chamber’s mirror.

Bilocation, multi-location--when an

Lincoln stated, “That I was to be elected a

individual or object is in two places at the exact

second term of office, and that the paleness of one

same time: glimpsed shadow of themselves in

of the faces was an omen that I should not see life

fringe vision. No chance of reflection in their

through the last term.”

flashed position.

A deeper truth existed beneath the surface of the

A look-a-like labeled harbinger. An omen.

chambered mirror; John Wilkes Booth’s bullet

At times, a ghostly double right by their sides.

exiting the front of Lincoln’s paled head.

A French teacher named Sagee, witnessed

by her 32 students, saw their teacher’s autoscopy

People have said that if Roy Buck

mimic and eat with nothing in her hands.

was a mode of transportation he’d

Sagee was ill. Her doppelganger passed

be an ostrich with a leather saddle.

through her. Her parallel double was vibrant. In

He was raised in Green and Gold

broad daylight, there was the bilocate and it was

country (Wisconsin) before living

motionless while Sagee taught, but the doppelganger

several years in both Missoula,

mimicked writing while the teacher thought.

MT and “da” UP, off Lake

Superior.

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Crow-Boy and the Opposite of Indifference

Fiction

By Brian Cooper

The people in the mountains have no religion

book that proves the existence of a Monastery on

and the gods walk among them. You can travel

Standing Mountain, and then of a First Village

only a few hours from here and if you have a

Under the Monastery on Standing Mountain and a

guide to trace the winding path, find an unnamed

Second Village Under the Monastery on Standing

village whose every inhabitant is acquainted with

Mountain. And so on. The book is a not a book

the crow-boy, and who offer food to him and his

of history or geography, but a collection of tax

associates. The inhabitants are less than a dozen

records, and implies that the Monastery was built

families now

first and that

and none of the

its presence

families large or

Remember to breathe

attracted the

healthy. Their

people who

losses give them

built houses,

reason to be hostile to outsiders, and sometimes

cultivated small, terraced farms, offered a tax in

reckless in their hostility. But if you bring weap-

the form of grain to the inmates of the monastery.

ons, food, and authority, each in quantities enough

And bred more of their kind. Implausible, but

to compensate for the villagers superior patience,

most of the villagers assent to this story, claiming

guile, and aptitude for suffering, you may be able to also that the Monastery itself was built the week learn something like what’s written here.

after the creation of the world, and that it was

abandoned at the time of the founding of the

The village is unnamed, but if you don’t go up

Empire. According to the tax records however, the

the mountain and instead go to the library in the

oldest people in Third Village should have heard

capital, you can ask the librarian to show you the

stories from their grandfathers about the

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Monastery’s construction, and even those in Fourth Still, this is the first time you’ve apprehended his Village should have childhood memories of their

offer. He’d enjoy your help in destroying the world

own to explain the monks’ departure.

as it is, starting and ending with the crumpled huts

of the First Village. Not need, not want. But enjoy.

If you do choose to go up the mountain and visit

And you’ll also enjoy it too in parts, sometimes the

the Monastery— a significant choice given the

thrill of power, sometimes the unthrill of

villagers antipathy toward any persons or beings

powerlessness. Swords. Fire. Croaks the crow-boy.

associated with what they have come to call The

Black Temple— you will find a place that, despite

Remember to breathe. Destroy? Without malice,

its reputation and history, stimulates the evaporation and without mercy. And yet with some other of consciousness that, according to some historians, opposite to indifference.

was the hallmark tenet of the structure’s builders.

It’s more not-there than there. Not only are the

Shouldn’t that be difference? Croaks the crow-boy.

timbers charred nearly to ash and the foundation

stones interpenetrated with mosses, fungi, and all

their inbred cousins, but the roof is composed of

fog and the floor is sketched from fallen leaves and

your soft, shuffling footsteps. Your shadows are

the last standing idol. The place’s not-thereness

welcomes your not-hereness, and if you linger long

enough to stop asking why you came or how much

Brian gave up playing Dungeons & Dragons soon after he

longer you’ll wait, or where you’ll go when you

got married and gave up writing fiction soon after he started

leave, the boy with glossy black hair and the

law school. Today, he has three sons and he works in the

unfortunate nose will at last get your attention.

general counsel’s office of a federal agency. And so, his very

cool and supportive wife says, if he wants to play games and

He’s been here all along and he’s not really quiet.

write stories, who’s going to say that he shouldn’t?

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yOWSa

Fiction

By Jacqueline Delibes

US HIGHWAY 46, New Jersey – Seth Grantberg

has staged a defiant occupation of the garage attached In an attempt to use the bathroom, Mr. Grantberg to his mother’s home in Parsippany, New Jersey. A

repeatedly banged on the door separating the garage

self-described “former Partner at commodities and

and main house, a door apparently bolted from the

derivatives brokerage house MF Global,” Mr.

inside by his mother Carolina Grantberg, 63. From

Grantberg, 42, readily granted an interview. MF

the kitchen, a muffled female voice answered, “You

Global, until recently headed by ex-New Jersey

want to use the amenities? Pay us back for your

Governor Jon Corzine, is currently under federal

education. Thank us for decades of sacrifice. Or

investigation for hundreds of millions of dollars in

clean the bathroom for once since 2008, how’s

missing money.

that?”

Mr. Grantberg, wearing a European-cut suit and

“Excuse me for a moment,” Mr. Grantberg said

vibrant power tie, appeared exhausted as he lay on a

as he raised the garage door and squatted behind

cot in the unheated garage. He noted that his current a hedge. Moments later he returned, zipping his diet includes root vegetables, a jar of Nescafé and

trousers. “A little customer money gets diverted

rain water. The former broker clutched a Cipriani

and now I’ve been cut off,” he said, and then yelled

Wall Street lunch menu to his chest.

towards the kitchen, “I’m pissed.”

An inquiry about why he remains in his mother’s

Asked to define what he’s demonstrating against

garage and the whereabouts of his wife, friends and

and what his specific demands are, Mr. Grantberg

home yielded a glacial silence. After several minutes, pointed to a protest sign painted with the words Mr. Grantberg acknowledged, “They’re gone.”

“A Return to Flowing, Beautiful Excess!” In the

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driveway, he marched alone in a circle for hours to

wave the sign at passing vehicles.

She added, “He’ll join us for dinner, like he does

every night. Tonight it’s roast chicken, glazed carrots.

“Let me back in – I’m proud to be part of the

Pudding.”

1%,” he shouted at a stray dog.

“Seth is in a time-out at the moment. Of course

Incredibly, Mr. Grantberg claimed to be completely he uses the bathroom.”

unaware of the Occupy Wall Street movement that

has captured worldwide media attention. “Really?” Mrs. Grantberg shouted towards the garage door, He looked away and fanned himself with a pile

“But not when he’s been so disrespectful.”

of stock certificates. “I hope they get what they

‘deserve.’”

Mr. Grantberg vigorously denied each of his mother’s

allegations of misconduct. “We acted perfectly within

“Are you interested in futures by any chance?” said SEC regulations. That’s all I’m permitted to say Mr. Grantberg, looking refreshed by the question.

because of the investigation.” He lit a cigar. “Caveat

“The future?” asked the reporter for clarification.

emptor.”

“Not the future. Futures.”

Carolina Grantberg answered a reporter’s knock at the

main entrance. The living room was decorated with

stylish mid-century furniture accented by cheerful

family photos.