Category: Issue Thirteen Fiction
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Issue Thirteen Fiction
In the Eye of Jupiter Religion ‘Sense and insensibility’ Black As Rise and Fall – A Cheerleader’s Triumph and Tragedy Free Range Eggs The Flynn Effect The School Boy Alice Fade to Blacking Out Stubborn as Mud SpaceTruck 1999 Mothman Wilt Tree Dwellers Darwin, with Archie Empty Heavenly Morsel
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Fade to Blacking Out
By Alex Eagles It’s party central, and you’re standing on the balcony rail at a house you don’t know the owner of. Chants erupt from below as the people — your people — await your next move. Slamming the last of a can and dropping it into the crowd below, you stare ahead at your…
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Free Range Eggs
By Vanity Conroy After My son hated dirt. When he was a child, he would complain that the feeling of it on his skin would make his gums ache. He couldn’t stand it until we got chickens at home. He stood in the yard holding handfuls of dirt until he couldn’t anymore. Eventually, his…
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Mothman
by Jack Morley. ‘Ma’am, would you please breathe for a moment.’ ‘Sorry, this is just all very overwhelming,’ she says. ‘I’ve never had to give a statement to a police officer, let alone the Sheriff.’ She pulls a tissue from the box sitting on his tidy desk. ‘Just tell me when you’d like me…
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Sense and Insensibility.
by Jane Downing. The traffic was as unremitting as the winter damp. Ellie missed the turn-off, forcing the technology into a hiccoughing insistence it was recalculating. Eventually their rental filtered off the motorway, where the roads were quickly narrow, countrified, and quiet. As far from the sunburnt country of dusty plains they were visiting…
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Heavenly Morsel
by Vanity Conroy I have met my God and I fear He does not look favourably upon me. I met him in 1954, when I was eighteen and wearing my mother’s old clothes. I was helping my father at the farmers market when he approached my stall. The sun shined a halo in his…
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In the Eye of Jupiter
By Kris Loilo It’d be a much smarter idea to just walk up to the door, knock and ask to be let inside, but the thing about that is that I’m not smart. So instead of taking the stairwell, I’m scaling the fire escape on the side of the complex and tiptoeing on ledges…
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Tree Dwellers
By Abhishek Udaykumar It wasn’t till that evening that the Coca-Colas were back on the shelf and we had a reason to walk up the slope. A litchi[1] tree hung from the sky and a woman washed vessels in the thicket. The occasional pickup trucks surprised me like sudden glyphs appearing inside a familiar…
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Black As.
By Keren Heenan She’s all sharp angles and dark and heavy brooding, anyone can see that. As soon as she opens the door and thumps herself down on the seat, turns to the window and scowls out at the landscape as if she holds it responsible. For something. Anyone can see. She’s a mood…
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Empty
By Taj Martin They made me return to the studio from the hospital. Apparently, I had made a remarkable recovery. My plain room, with the view of the garden, would be occupied by someone else. I knew that when I inevitably returned, the chances of getting the same room were slim to none. I…
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Darwin, with Archie.
By Charlie Gill In Darwin, when it was too hot outside, we’d lie on our beds and watch reruns of A Current Affair. Smug journalists in shirtsleeves would loiter outside brick-walled homes to confront “the country’s most contemptible characters”: conmen, hoarders, addicts, bludgers and battlers and thugs. When the door swung open, they’d spit…
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Religion
By Peter Dellolio THE CEMETERY GROUNDSKEEPER, annoyed at having his peaceful day interrupted, chased the pack of noisy boys away. If they were not visiting a relative or friend who had passed on, they had no business there. A fat wooden slingshot, protruding from the back pocket of the nasty, fatuous ringleader, betrayed the…
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The Flynn Effect
by Ib Svane On the Swedish west coast, where the Skagerrak meets the Kattegat, is a fjord called Gullmarsfjorden, or Gullmarn. At the mouth of the fjord is the island of Skaftö with a marine laboratory called Kristineberg. It has been there for a long time, but a few years after the discovery of the…
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SpaceTruck: 1999
By Tim Augier An emerald shape streaked across the inky void of space. Impressed against the black canvas sporadically populated with far-off twinkles of white, a boxy, unnatural, object. It almost looked as if someone had fused a semi-truck with some kind of rocket. Which, in essence, they had. Inside the cab of the SpaceTruck™,…
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Rise and Fall – A Cheerleader’s Triumph and Tragedy
By Mia Suda The club pop music blared from the speakers during the transition between setting up the next dance team’s routine from the previous one. Elara could feel the mounting tension rising within her bones. Soon. She will be going into the warmup room. Soon. Those sixteen minutes would fly by. Soon. Those blinding…
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Alice
By Isabella Tuccio Alice, Alice quite unbalanced How does your brain stand still? With yellow pills and electric chills And doctors sharing each blow. * 15/03/2023 Alice sat on the steps of the warn backyard veranda, knees tucked firmly under her chin, one hand hanging porously, the round ashen tip of a fast-burning cigarette…
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The School Boy
by Ib Svane John heard his mother call, ‘Time for school — come and get your lunch!’ He walked down the stairs to the kitchen, picked up the lunch box his mother had prepared and put it into his school bag. He kissed her, said goodbye, and walked out the door. She waved at…
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Stubborn as Mud
By Ruairi Walsh Rain pitched down on the paddocks, drowning the bellows of the prime steer prepped for market. The gravel dirt tracks streamed water downhill, filling the trenches and spilling onto the road in a swirling coffee and cowpat brown pattern that pooled across the property. Miserable. Simon observed the storm from his…
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Wilt
By Ella O’Neill Lisa arrived home to her small flat at about six in the evening after a slow day at the office. She just felt off and couldn’t quite explain it. It was as if her footsteps dropped a little louder today, each step felt a little heavier than usual. She turned on her…