Category: Issue Eight Fiction

by Kate Harland. Sitting on a Bench in the Afternoon They sat side by side on a park bench. In front of them a playground, behind them a white building with columns and cornices. Behind it were hills so far in the distance they appeared only as varying shades of purple. High pitched laughter of children imitated machinery sounds…

by Carly Rawson The worst of the cyclone had spared them but it still gave the town a good licking. The power was out, the roads full of water and downed trees. Sylvie, stiff from packing, felt sore too. They had lived by that beach for seven years. A drowning beach, big rips and big…

By Daniela Abriola I wasn’t opposed to the idea of going out for drinks. Especially since I hadn’t left my room in three days. But who’s counting. Except I felt rather comfortable staying in the cacoon of blankets I had made for myself over the past three days. I had an abundance of Glee episodes…

by Laura Wild The woods are dark. They crawl with evil beasts that slither and stalk after prey through the bristling walls of pines and lonely valleys that sink between the mountains. Bones lie blanketed beneath moss and sticky pitch, drawn apart by roots and teeth. The forest is a crypt, and each night its…

by Tina Tsironis Flirting that functions as foreplay is my downfall. I can’t get enough of the shoving, the ribbing, the close lean into one another, just enough that I inhale their momentarily pacifying lavender perfume. What really gets me, though, is the verbal back and forth. When flirting becomes a dialogue-driven duel of words designed…

by Kate Harland There’s a somewhat delicate and complicated thing. A precious and knowing thing that         I have kept with me. A thing that’s forgotten ’cept for when it’s remembered and whole bunch of light bulbs go off all in a row. Little bits all lit up like sugary breadcrumbs in the moonlight making a…

By Miles Boyle-Bryant ‘You smell like old fish.’ ‘Yeah? Well you smell like dog farts, Leo.’ I’m Leo. My dad is old fish. ‘Yeah, but you look like a dog’s bum.’ ‘And your mother says you’re my spitting image.’ ‘Rack off old man. Grow some hair, your head looks like a big angry pimple.’ ‘That’ll…

by Jessica Murdoch The One with the Cake Cake isn’t about cake. It’s about comfort or celebration or nostalgia. Cravings for cake cannot be easily satiated by substitutions. Cake means birthdays. Elaborate creations from the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake book. A pool. A piano. A princess. Planning. Weeks – possibly months – go into…