In the courtyard, at the entrance to the bookshop, an egg smashed on the cobbled ground – albumen, yolk and the bald outline and bulging eye of an almost-bird.
Category: fiction
Hoop — Harriet Sandilands
There is an unspoken rule in a therapy group that you are not going to go out for a beer afterwards. It’s the same way that no-one actually tells you that you shouldn’t have sex with someone you just met on the third day of a meditation retreat, but you still know it isn’t a very good idea.
Cures For The Common Cold — Sarah de Souza
Thinking about this, they grow wide-eyed and speak so fast that the windows become flecked with child spittle. How can they have made themselves so ridiculous by dreaming?
Kaleidoscope — Jenna Clake
The horoscope said: You are a fish. You will come to understand this. She found this funny because it seemed like something more suitable for a fortune cookie, and because she had once had a boyfriend who, during arguments, told her that she kissed like a koi carp.
Three from Color Wheel — Salvatore Difalco
Underscoring the onset of nausea on the pier, feelings of self-loathing
also bubble up to the surface. “I get seasick in the bathtub, man,”
declares a ponytailed dude in Plymouth pink.
Good and Beautiful — Laura Eppinger
Henri is at least good for catching the scent of socio-political turmoil in the air.
The Sea People — Euan Currie
I often fantasise about tipping the cabinet forward until the plastic drawers slide out and spill their contents in a wave of plastic. I tell myself they should be recycled or reused. But in the fantasy it all just spills out and keeps on spilling.
Something You Can Feel in Your Teeth — Hannah Stevens
Neither of them talk much in the morning. Somehow things are more difficult in the early hours. She feels more fragile, more lost, more oppressed by the narrow confines and the lack of light.
Scheherazade — Lydia Waites
He studies me for a second before facing the road again, his jaw set. My breath is caught in my throat. I clear it, arranging my thoughts. It was just an outburst, a loss of patience: I am safe.
Fiachaire — Shannen Malone
“We can’t take it all,” her brother had said, tossing memories in a bin bag like kittens for drowning.
ONE POEM – Aidan Dolbashian
That cow can’t walk. She’s all lame. I won’t touch her hooves.
FLASH FICTION – Edvige Guinta
I told no one. Not my parents, not my older sister, not my little brother. I locked myself in the bathroom while my mother stirred tomato sauce and tasted spaghetti (we did not like al dente).
Porridge 