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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
Donations
Submission
Guidelines
Website
Stories
& Essays
Copy Machine
Repair Guy
_ By
D.E. Fredd
Corrupted
Youth
_ By
Kurt Kirchmeier
Dragon's
Breath
_ By
Lionel Cheng
Even the Damned Deserve to Love
_ By
Anna Cortez
Gifts
_ By
Jocelyn Johnson
House of Cards
_ By
Steven J. Dines
In Doubt
_ By
Stephanie Thoma
Lipstick
_ By
Michelle Baron
Old Biddy
_ By
Claire Nixon
Quinceañera
_ By
Hester Young
The Fiddler and the Faerie
_ By
Samantha Rae
When Barky Smiles
_ By
S.E. Diamond
Poetry
2 A.M. Window Shopping
_ By
Chris McGuffin
Alison
_ By
Harriet O. Leach
Cloudy New Year's Morning
_ By
Richard Fein
Not Easy
_ By
Samantha Ogust
On Hearing Li-Young Lee Read
His Poetry
_ By
Foster Dickson
Prelude and Coda
_ By
Richard Fein
Rainy Night Meditation
_ By
Harriet O. Leach
Retreat
_ By
Richard MacAleese
Silage Team--Machete Thirst
_ By
Leland Jamieson
Starlight
_ By
Richard MacAleese
Stolen Phone
_ By
Jorge Jameson
The Abandoned Playground
_ By
Richard MacAleese
Thought Provoking Baked Crescent
_ By
Chris McGuffin
Art
& Photography
Daniel Bravo
_ Paintings
Tove Hedengren
_ Photography
Peter Huettenrauch
_ Photography
E. Hunting
_ Drawings
and Digital Art
Robin
McQuay
_ Drawings
Iris
Onica
_ Paintings
Pete Revonkorpi
_ Digital
Art
Roy Wangsa
_ Photography
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House
of Cards
By
Steven J. Dines
We
meet in the beachfront games arcade because they don’t like you
going there. I let you lose on the slots, rolling my eyes and
handing over change as required. The summers get longer and hotter
every year. The Earth’s a pressure cooker. Just the other week,
there was a tornado in Birmingham. You look good tonight, by the
way.
We
drive to a place even the doggers haven’t sniffed out yet.
It’s the most secret place in the world. Exclusively ours, I
whisper. Insects watch us through the rear window. An African
child dies in the time it takes me to peel off your white panties.
I snap my fingers, another, damn it, snap again, another...
and your bra’s undone. Somewhere in the world a hole is filling
up.
You
don’t want to dance, you say. I’ve only done a few steps.
Okay, what about some music? Yes!
Oh, yes! And you’re headlong through the seat gap for
the radio buttons on the dash. You find Britney Spears as I reach
for the moon. The windows are steaming up.
You
weep and tell me how you lied in all our private rooms. And how
much you’re sorry. You’re sorry? I say. Can you even spell ‘irony’? Have they taught you
that yet? With your cherry lips you beg forgiveness from my skin.
I’m lost in the back of your head, stroking your hair, wondering
who you’ve got in there instead of big old me—some scrawny
teenage boy-crush, perhaps. I can feel the silver wires on your
teeth. Nelly raps on the radio, Hot In Herre. Prolonging
the ecstasy and the agony, I spell it in my mind for you: I-R-O-N-Y...
You
leave the car grown yet diminished. I offer to drop you somewhere,
but you’ll walk, you’ll be all right, you don’t need a lift
or taxi or bus fare or anything else. “Good idea,” I say,
smiling. “Buses blow up these days.” But you’re walking not
listening.
I
return to a house of cards and a blank, white stare from the PC
screen in the corner. I miss the whirrs and bleeps of the arcade
already. I switch on the television then fall back on the double
bed that was too small then and is too big now. There’s a
shallow concavity in the mattress, barely noticeable, although to
me it’s a gaping hole. I like to run my hand along it: down, up,
down. God, even the mattress can’t forget. On the TV, a panel
discuss the ozone layer and global warming. The summers get longer
and hotter every year. Last December, the tsunami killed many
thousands of people. I make that a lot of zeroes. An instant
message alert yanks me across the room to the computer. I wonder
which one it is now. And if she’s lying.
Either
way, I don’t care.
_
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STEVEN J. DINES lives in the granite city of Aberdeen, Scotland. He has been writing short fiction for many years, and has appeared online and in print in
Voices from the Web, Gold Dust, Skive, The Beat, Blue Almonds, Dark Tales, Buzzwords, The Writers Post Journal, 63Channels, Word Riot, Noo Journal, Underground Voices, Rumble, Zygote in My Coffee, Wild Child, Double Dare Press, Outsider Ink, The Quiet Feather, Eclectica, Escaping Elsewhere, Cherry
Bleeds, and in forthcoming issues of Delivered, The Hurricane Review, Shadowed Pathways,
and Peeks & Valleys.
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