CURRENT ISSUE
Spring 2026
Big Sky and the Extraordinary
Contemplation of Pigeons – by Joe Ducato
~ A school maintenance man channels Icharus,
his pigeons and his younger self
~ But they promised!
Bigfoot Talks – by Robert Boucheron
~ Huge fun eavesdropping on Mr. and Mrs. Bigfoot!
Encyclopedic, Enigmatic,
Big-Armed Lucas – by Brady Rhoades
~ A couple tests the limits of AI
Coffee Break – by Robert Bishop
~ Death comes a-callin’ at a diner
Dying and Dancing in the Rain – by Melanie Steger
~ A boyhood loss
~ A different sort of reality at an art & craft gallery
Marvin Waters – by Sascha Zenai
~ A dreamy neighbor, a welcome visitor
My Wife Doesn’t See Dead People – by David Hensen
~ It’s a new normal when the exception becomes the rule
~ A superb whodunnit
~ Good, from where you’d least expect it
~ Now, that’s a Valentine!
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Big Sky and the Extraordinary Contemplation of Pigeons
by Joe Ducato
ROUTINE was God. Every day started out the same. Achilles unlocked the school door with a key from his tambourine-like key ring then headed to the boiler room to see the sisters, the twin boilers he’d named Sotera and Hestia - after the Greek Goddesses of Safety and Warmth. Achilles always checked on the sisters first because of their tempers. The smallest thing could set them off, and when that happened everyone’s day went upside down.
He put his ear to both furnaces. The sisters were in fine spirits. He checked their pressures (6 pounds was optimal), looked for cracked hoses or loose fittings, then turned towards The Gypsy, the auxiliary boiler in the back and the school’s original furnace. It had been put in when people knew how to make boilers. The Gypsy was King in Achilles’ eyes. Convinced that everything was as it should be in The Steam Kingdom, he retreated to the Maintenance Office to wait out the stampede.
After earth and brick stopped shaking and every student was in their classrooms, he saddled up The Stallion (the most powerful riding floor sweeper known to man or woman) and rode it through the halls as slow as he could knowing there wasn’t a kid alive who wouldn’t trade an uncle for a ride. He never smiled until he was out of sight then smiled big. Even Mr. Gomez, the boy-principal, loved it when Achilles rode The Stallion through the streets of Dodge.
At 11:00, when the other maintenance guy came in, Achilles went up to the roof. He said it was “to check the storm drains” but really it was to sit in his lawn chair and stare at Big Sky as he called endless sky unencumbered by land. In drenching sunlight, he lowered himself, put his hands behind his head and marveled at the largeness of the heavens. He closed his eyes and let the sun make string pictures on the insides of his eyelids. He touched the letter in his top pocket, the letter from home. When Achilles opened his eyes again, he gasped.
A child was standing before him, a boy of only 5 or 6. He couldn’t tell if the boy was real or something his imagination and sunlight had made, or maybe one too many Mountain Dews. He didn’t recognize the boy and he knew them all.
“What are you doing up here?” Achilles barked, then whispered “My God” to himself. He could feel his heart race.
The blank-faced child didn’t respond.
“Who’s your teacher?” Achilles pressed, “Where are your parents?” The child stood mannequin-like for a moment then suddenly turned and ran. He ran across the flat roof and ducked behind a vent. Achilles got up, walked to the vent and looked behind it. No boy there - only cigarette butts and dead spiders. Achilles looked back at the empty lawn chair then all around the roof. He felt as if he were standing on Mars.
He went down and reported what he had seen to the boy-principal which resulted in a ruckus. The police were called and the roof thoroughly searched. Teachers were interrogated. After all was said and done, every student had been accounted for. The boy-principal dropped a sad eye on Achilles who sat slumped in a chair.
Later Achilles brought the other maintenance guy to the roof and showed him where he’d seen the boy. The other maintenance guy listened and nodded, walked around a little then went back down. Achilles sat in his chair and read the letter from home again.
Routine was God. The next morning, Achilles did the usual and at 11:00 went back to the roof.
He stood next to the lawn chair. A flock of pigeons suddenly flew in and plopped themselves, all in a row, on the roof’s edge looking out over the school yard.
Achilles marveled at the peace the pigeons seemed to have. They were like Yoga masters – like little feathery buddhas. Something about their plump existence felt good to Achilles’ soul. The sky was not yet blue; but gray and opaque. Somewhere a train rumbled and a dog began to bark followed by another and another. Achilles pictured dogs pulling at their chains, trying to break free - free to chase a train off the end of the Earth never caring or knowing why. The day smelled new.
Achilles remembered a story he’d read in a book once, a book of folklore. It was a story of a remarkable pigeon that never forgot where it came from. Even years after the nest was gone and progress had changed the landscape, it always flew back to the one place it knew as home. The pigeon was hit by a car and couldn’t fly and still walked many miles over many days to get to that place. Achilles didn’t know if the story were true, but he loved it just the same.
When he turned, he saw the boy again walking towards him. The boy stopped and picked up a rubber ball, a ball that someone had maybe hit too far so it ended up in Heaven as the kids called the school roof, that mysterious place that swallowed errant throws. The boy studied the ball then brought it to the edge where the pigeons, the feathery buddhas were.
Stop!” Achilles cried out, “You’ll fall off!"
The child laughed, “You’re silly.”
Fearlessly, the boy sat on the edge and dangled his legs in the air. The pigeons didn’t stir, their contemplation was unbreakable.
Achilles cautiously approached. He battled his fear of being too close to the edge. When he got close enough, he managed to grab hold of the boy’s shirt.
“There!” he huffed.
The boy stood. Achilles had never seen eyes so blue. A pigeon ruffled its feathers. It startled Achilles. He let go of the shirt. The boy dropped the ball and ran away as fast as he could. There was no catching him. When he was far enough away, he turned back.
“Don’t go,” Achilles pleaded.
But the boy didn’t listen. He turned and ran until he was out of sight.
“You come here,” Achilles whispered to the pigeons, “…just to be near it, don’t you?”
Achilles picked up the rubber ball. A vapor trail rose from a vent, Sotera and Hestia letting off steam.
“Hey! Hey!” came the high-pitched shouts from some kids standing on the grass below. “Throw the ball!!” they shouted with flailing, outstretched arms. Achilles stood tall like he had conquered a mountain.
“Can I have a ride on the floor sweeper?” a boy shouted to the laughter of the others.
Achilles put his hands on his hips.
“Is that a yes?” the boy asked.
“It’s a maybe,” Achilles winked. “Someday.”
“Someday never comes,” a little girl yelled. Achilles wound up and threw the ball as far as he could. It landed on the grass and bounced away from the kids. In unison, they broke into a wild sprint for the bouncing ball.
The pigeons could hardly contain themselves. They trembled with joy. Achilles trembled too, realizing that he now knew how to go home. His heart felt free like he could fly. Below he spotted a child running with the ball and being chased by the others. “They’ll never catch him,” Achilles laughed as he backed up a couple steps to get a running start.
# # #
Joe Ducato’s publishing credits include Adelaide Literary Magazine, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Modern Literature, Written Tales and Bangalore Review. He lives in Utica, NY.
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The Deception
by Fred White
HE ROSE FROM his grassy bed, stretched and inhaled deeply. The air was invigorating and filled with floral fragrances. Energy coursed through his body, and he obeyed the impulse to run through a grove of trees laden with reddish globes. He also felt…he struggled to find words to fit the reality…disconnected? disoriented? isolated? Certainly isolated. He called out: “Hallooo! Anyone here?” But nobody responded. Where in creation was he? It occurred to him that he could be trapped in a dream, so he willed himself to wake up.
Nothing changed.A voice boomed out just then: “Well, well, I see that you’re up and about. Welcome to Paradise, son.”
“Hello! Who and where are you?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. But first, there are a couple things you need to know: First, you are endowed with eternal life and complete fulfillment.”
“Sounds great. Who’s speaking?”
“There’s one danger, though, and that’s the second thing you need to know.”
“A danger? But you said this is Paradise.”
“I know, I know, it sounds paradoxical, but bear with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. Understanding is irrelevant in Paradise.”
“At least explain the danger. But first, identify yourself. Come out from wherever you’re hiding. I’d like to see who’s talking to me."
“Patience, patience, little man. Now then: Do you see those trees? The ones with those globes of red fruit?"
“Of course I see them. They look delicious. Are they edible? I’m starving.”
“Oh, they’re edible all right! They’re called apples. They embody the knowledge of good and evil. Chomp on one of those babies and you’re a goner. You will then learn about and understand the world. You will come to know the pleasures of the flesh; but you will also know pain and misery, and you will die.”
“Whoa—wait. If this is Paradise, what’s the point of planting such trees here? “Good question, son. It’s to test you, to see how well you listen to your creator when temptation comes your way. You will soon be tested in all sorts of ways especially after I fashion a female companion for you from one of your ribs.”
“Yikes. But wait a minute: if I’m completely fulfilled, how can I be so needy as to be tempted by anyone or anything? Why must I be tested?”
“You were given free will, the freedom to make the right choices.”
“That sounds like a condition of mind, the exercising of judgment, critical thinking, born of knowledge. But didn’t you say that knowledge is—?”
“Look, I know, there are inconsistencies; but just take my word for it when I tell you to stay away from those apples.”
This conversation with the disembodied voice was giving him a headache. “Who are you? Why am I here—wherever “here” is? Why are you describing conditions that pique my curiosity—and my appetite—and then telling me not to think about them? I don’t think I’m going to like this place.”
Something stirred in the grass. He stared in awe as a cobra raised its hooded head to speak.
“You’re in deep shit,” hissed the snake. “It appears that I’m not the only deceiver at work around here.”
# # #
Fred White's fiction and humor have appeared in Zodiac Review ("Creation: A Flash Epic"; Summer 2020), Bright Flash Literary Review, Chortle, etc. He lives in Folsom, CA.
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Bigfoot Talks
by Robert Boucheron
NAN AND I were enjoying some face time in the cave, and I said: “A few days ago in the woods, I found a trail of fries leading to a trap baited with a cheese-burger. I tripped the spring with a twig and had a nice snack.”
“Merv, why were you out in broad daylight?”
“Foraging. I hit the dumpster behind the Stop and Spend.”
“That would explain the takeout cartons.”
“Sometimes trash really hits the spot.”
“We should eat natural. Root tubers, fungi, and insect larvae.”
“Anyway, that guy in camo with the telephoto lens was lurking again.”
“Bigfoot Hunter?”
“That’s the handle he uses when he posts a comment on my blog. His Google profile pic has the same hat with earflaps, the same goofy face.”
“Bigfoot Hunter caught on to your habit.”
“The guy wasn’t trying to hide,” I said. “He was upwind. A woodland creature could smell him a mile away.”
“With any luck, a real hunter will mistake him for a deer and take him out.”
“They’re all trigger happy and drunk.”
“What does Bigfoot Hunter want?” Nan asked.
“Scientific evidence. He calls himself a cryptozoologist. No weapons, just a camera. I wanted to flash a big, toothy grin, or flip the finger.”
“Merv, that would only intrigue him. Bigfoot is supposed to be shy and elusive.”
“I hate the stereotype.”
“Go against it, and you’re asking for trouble.”
“Up to now he’s only gotten a partial side shot. What if I give him a full frontal?”
“Next, he’ll want a biosample. He’ll try to attach a radio transmitter to your fur.”
“Just once, Nan, I’d like to show them the truth, tell my side of the story.”
“Why, so they can put you on the cover of a tabloid? Get real, Merv.”
“I’d like to give an interview on NPR.”
“As what, a celebrity? They want historically underrepresented minorities.”
“We’re an endangered species!”
“Let the media in, and we’ll be extinct. Look, Merv, I know it’s hard for you.”
“I get so frustrated. They say Bigfoot is backward, primitive, ape-like.”
“The same things they said about redskins and hillbillies. Welcome to Appalachia.”
“They say we’re no more than a folk tale, an animal believed to exist but without proof. It’s like being called a nonentity in a Russian novel.”
“Are you reading Dostoevsky again?”
“A hiker left a paperback next to her campfire.”
“Maybe she finished it and didn’t want the dead weight in her pack.”
“No, there was a fancy bookmark at page 285. I’ll post a lost-and-found notice.”
“Merv, I wish you never started that blog.”
“Because it attracts crazy people?”
“They post wild comments, date requests. The portraits look phony.”
“You’re probably right. AI is everywhere in social media.”
“Eventually, one of these nuts will trace us through the internet.”
“A Bigfoot fan with computer smarts?”
“I don’t know, but I worry.”
“You’re a worrier, Nan. That’s why I love you.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!”
“How about a smooch?”
“Now you’re talking.”
# # #
Robert Boucheron is an architect in Charlottesville, Virginia. His stories, flash fiction, poems, and essays appear in Bellingham Review, Fiction International, Flash Nonfiction Food, Saturday Evening Post, and online magazines such as Lunate, Spelk, Reflex Press, and The Zodiac Review.
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Encyclopedic, Enigmatic, Big-Armed Lucas
by Brady Rhoades
DICKEY MADE the couple’s favorite sandwich. On the kitchen counter: cold cuts, a hot dog, cheddar cheese, an avocado, an onion, maple syrup, hamburger buns—half from Maya’s childhood, half from his. He wore a T-shirt, jeans with change in the pockets, and split-toe sandals.
He put the hot dogs into the toaster oven, tucked into a corner of the couch, and turned on WKRP in Cincinnati just in time for the opening shot of the Roebling Suspension Bridge. He must have crossed that bridge a thousand times.
Maya, wearing a backless evening dress, retired to the bedroom.
***
A week prior, she had upgraded both of them to the OnePlus 6 because it scored high on GeekBench. They spent hours poring over features, giggling like school-kids.
They were proud Boomers—always enthusiastic, mostly behind. They would never catch up, but the cause was fun. Dickey got hooked on an app that allowed him to converse in any language. He’d say what he wanted in English, press "Spanish" or "Mandarin" or "Farsi," and bang-boom, he could go anywhere in the world and order food, ask for a smoke, find a john. He never went more than twenty miles outside Zanesville, but he could have.
Madlib was a kick. They spent a weekend at home, cooking one-pot pasta, calling out I enjoy long, evil walks on the beach, getting assaulted in the rain and serendipitous encounters with walruses; I loudly murdered out the hooker, I shot into fluffy traffic, the cars were bunny to bunny; Needless to say, havoc reigns as the platypuses continue to rap every-thing in sight, until they are killed by the common dirt.
Texting was a blessing. Dickey barely had to talk to his boss at the music store.
Maya got involved with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. She used Yahoo for news updates. OnePlus 6 Bullets transmitted audible traffic alerts and updates.
She relied on AI for financial planning, medical counsel, work memos, home organizing, cooking advice, and how to argue for Christ when confronted by atheists—all offered up by her personal assistant, Lucas.
***
Maya was a human resources pro and the go-to person when her family needed counseling on healthcare and office drama. She wore bangs and painted her nails in polka dots, giving her a girlish vibe. She’d spent a recent Tuesday night checkmating a spider to the outdoors. She called out bullies in public. She was the breadwinner, better than Dickey at everything except musicology and relaxation. He was as lax as a cat in its second decade.
Mostly, Dickey felt lucky, but at times he sensed he was underdressed at a big function. His face—tinted glasses, sideburns, a beard that wouldn’t fully commit to beardness—was an exercise in hiding, and his build, well, in high school they’d called him “The Wire Hanger,” and hangers bend.
He knew Lucas and all the other technology had made their lives easier, more efficient. Why complain? But at home, at night?
The two would be waxing poetic about Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Musiq Soulchild, The Small Faces, Little Feat, King Curtis, and she’d get to fact-checking. Didn’t he want to know? Took a second. And what about that storm coming in from Michigan? She had to get the weather forecast to prep for work. Besides, Lucas, teamed with other devices, could analyze her heart, her stress levels, her sleep. He’d became her workout buddy, road dog, confidante, news anchor, photo editor, file
***
Dickey tried to work the situation to a plus. He asked Lucas for a playlist, and in nine seconds Lucas created a songbook featuring Sarah Vaughn, Amy Winehouse, Ravel’s Bolero, Peruvian garage music, and Chicano torch songs. It made no sense, but was perfect to the ear.
Then Maya learned that Lucas had another talent: pleasure expert. Step one, he advised: purchase a vibrating, heating, suctioning dildo (he suggested two reputable brands); Step 2: Connect it to your smartphone via app; Step 3: How about a more risqué playlist? He could produce that; 4) He could write a steamy script involving role-playing, but she would have to be the director. What was she looking for?
Maya asked if he could make himself toxically masculine, enigmatic, with seventeen-inch arms?
Absolutely!
***
“Yesss,” Dickey heard. For weeks, Maya had been quivering, undulating, sprawling like those California wildfires she’d seen on TV. At sixty four, she’d become her own weather system, and now she was sounding like pre-churchly, 1970s Love to Love You Donna Summer.
He side-eyed the bedroom.
“Mmmm.”
On the tube, Johnny Fever, blues and rock to the bone, ever suspicious of the trends of the 1970s, was peddling disco. He was evangelically opposite who he’d been, owing to bennies and greed. Just Dickey’s luck to tune into this episode on this night.
“Yes…”
Dickey’s phone shivered. Could be the store or Kenny or Dallas. Could be a scam, a political campaigner. He needed a break.
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO SHUT DOWN? He was sure.
“Oh, God!”
He knocked on the bedroom door.
“Not now, babe!”
“Making sandwiches.”
“No thanks!”
He loped back to his comfort zone in the hemisphere of greater Cincinnati, Ohio, home of his river and his Reds, with a hickory-black Louisville Slugger on his shoulder. The TV issued the only light.
“Ohhh, God!”
Maya had another quality that had charmed Dickey from the start. If she’d done one damaging thing in the course of a day, she’d wrestle in the wee hours, too tortured to sleep, and Dickey, his thirty-year crush revived, would tell her it was nothing.
“Oh, God, oh Jesus, oh my, wait… no, enough, enough! Lucas, that’s enough.”
In seconds, the TV was smithereens. Dickey entered the bedroom. Lucas had been thrown across the room. Dickey put the bat down. Maya rocked, cried, apologized, hands steepled between her knees. Dickey placed a sandwich on the bed and lay beside her.
# # #
Brady Rhoades's short stories and poetry have appeared in The Antioch Review, Faultline, Georgetown Review, the museum of Americana: A LITERARY REVIEW, Notre Dame Review, The William & Mary Review and other publications. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. Rhoades is a journalist who works and lives in Fullerton, California.
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Coffee Break
Robert P. Bishop
The woman entered the coffee shop and paused just inside the door. Her eyes flicked from table to table, rested briefly on me, then moved on. Even though she was many feet away, she made me apprehensive. A foolish sensation on my part, I know, but there was something about her; she looked like she was searching. Her gaze came back to me. Then she smiled.
She approached my table. “Hello, James. May I?” Without waiting for my reply, she sat down. I knew who she was. “You are Death.” “Yes.” She smiled. I stared at her, wondering how something as terrifying as death could be so beautiful. “You are not what I expected.”
“I’m often told that.”
“Is this where it happens to me? In this coffee shop?” Death ignored my question.
“It’s a relief to sit down. It’s been such an exhausting day.”
“Why are you here?”
Death ignored my question. “Is the coffee worth the outrageous prices these trendy cafes charge?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be back.” She got up, went to the counter, returned a few moments later, sat down, popped the top off the paper cup, took a sip and said, “Mmm, good. Definitely worth the price.”
“Why are you here?” I asked again, briskly tapping my finger on the table to show my irritation at being ignored. After all, a man should know why Death has chosen to sit at his table. “Oh, please, James, I’m on my break.” Death took another sip of coffee and smiled at me. “I want to know. Am I going to die right here, in this coffee shop?”
Death didn’t answer. She smiled and took another sip.
“I’m leaving.” I stood up.
“It won’t matter if you leave, James. Sit down and listen to me.” The commanding tone in her voice made me sit.
“I will tell you a story that is centuries old.” Her voice softened, became pleasant and soothing. “In a Bagdad marketplace, the servant of a rich man saw me. I frightened the servant. He thought I was coming for him. The servant went home and asked his master for a horse so he could flee to Samarra. Later that day, the master saw me in the market and asked why I had frightened his servant. I told the master that I didn’t mean to frighten his servant. I was merely surprised to see the servant in Baghdad because he had an appointment with me in Samarra later in the day.” Death stopped talking and smiled at me.
“I don’t understand.”
“It means you cannot escape me, James. You can flee to Samarra, or Seattle, or Tashkent, but I will find you, and we will keep our appointment.
”Is my appointment now?”
“No. I’m on my coffee break.”
“Then why are you sitting at my table, telling me about an appointment a servant had with you in Samarra?”
Death looked at her wristwatch. “It’s 2:13 right now. Your appointment with me is at 2:17 in the afternoon.”
“What? Are you telling me I have four minutes left to live?”
“Maybe, but notice I did not give you a date. I only gave you a time.”
“So, I could die today, tomorrow, three weeks from now or whenever, but I will die at 2:17 in the afternoon. On an unknown date. Is that correct?”
“That is correct.” Death smiled at me.
Anger began to bubble in me, and I was beginning to dislike her smarmy smile; it had turned predatory. “You are such a bitch.”
“I’m often told that.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“If you can control your anger and fear and think about what I have said, you will know I have given you a gift.”
“Oh sure,” I snorted, “telling me the hour and minute I am going to die is some gift, all right.”
“James, if you knew today was the last day of your life, how would you live it? What would you do with your last day?” I didn’t say anything.
“Few people have been given this gift, James.”
“Lucky me.”
“Now don’t be bitter, James,” Death admonished me. “Since you know the exact time but not date of your death, I am going to assume you will now live each day with a new, and more urgent, appreciation of life.” She put her hand on mine. “Think of it as separating the wheat from the chaff.”
I looked at my watch: 2:18. “Looks like I’m not going to die today,” I smirked.
“You are not,” said Death with that annoying smile still on her lips. “But what could very well be your last 24 hours have started counting down.”
I stared at her, unable to say anything.
“I must go, James.” She stood, and still smiling, said, “We will meet again, in Samarra.”
I watched her walk away, then bought another cup of coffee, took a sip and thought about what Death had said; the coffee was definitely worth the price.
# # #
Robert P. Bishop, a US Army veteran and former teacher, holds a Master’s in biology.
He taught in Washington State, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Morocco and Bahrain before settling in Tucson, Arizona. His short fiction has appeared in numerous print and online journals. He has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize.
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Dying and Dancing in the Rain
by Melanie Steger
THE RAGGED WAVES of the pond’s surface, stoked by the furious union of wind and rain, pounded against his acorn cap boats. And he wondered from his crouched position on the storm drenched shore if those little acorns were at all scared. And he wondered if, supposing they were, if that would delight the shallow pond, who had surely spent the majority of its life ignored. And he wondered why he was wondering about these immaterial things when the sole McKinley girl had just been killed at the age of four (four and three quarters, she would have corrected him).
Water forged its own ecosystem of rivers down his face as it streamed from his hair and bit into his exposed skin. His pale fingers fumbled in his suit pocket for another acorn cap. Their rough surfaces hardly registered against his numb skin, and twice he dropped the nut into the blackened mud. Perhaps the mud was a better alternative. Set afloat, the acorn boat would survive only a few frantic moments. One thick droplet of rain to fill it. Two to capsize it. Mud ate things slower, a soft slow sink. Peaceful.
Would it be peaceful for the McKinley girl who was, he presumed, to be buried in her Sunday best, starched and posed and decorated with the sort of precision only a doll could maintain? Or would, given the choice, she would have preferred to be cast naked into the grave, a blanket of dirt sliding between her toes, caressing through her hair, wrapping across her chest to clutch her close as her mother surely had?
He set the acorn boat, already resigned to its fate, adrift. The cap was of stout build and the pond waves took full advantage. They sloshed over the sides as the cap twirled and whirled in panic before, with hardly more than a bubble, it slid below the surface to join the others resting at the murky bottom like a graveyard of battleships.
The acquisition of the acorn caps was something of a mystery to him. He’d left the house intending to walk the half mile journey to the funeral home in spite of the rain. The sidewalk had been scattered with acorns, making a carpet so thick, they were liable to trip anyone not paying excruciating attention to their foot placement. One had caught his eye and he’d picked it up, stripped off the cap, and pocketed it. Just like he had as a boy and tried to delay the trip to school with meaningless tasks. Then another caught his eye. A third. His pockets had ended up laden with the acorn caps and- well, he certainly couldn’t attend a funeral in such a state.
Rumbles echoed from the road just beyond the copse of maple trees sheltering the pond. Rising from his crouched position, saturated suit unyielding to his movements, he listened as the car neared and then faded. Heading to the funeral? Or perhaps somewhere more pleasant. That was one small mercy of the lingering downpour. All individuality of the landscape was reduced.
The McKinley girl, hadn’t she been struck by a car? He’d heard that much somewhere. Had she been collecting acorn caps too? Had she ever wasted an entire afternoon setting them sail one by one?
Another car, headlights diffused by sheets of rain, growled past. He ought to go on ahead to the funeral now. His mother would surely be aghast at his state. It took no great leap to imagine her stony look as she cradled Mrs. McKinley’s hand in her lap and glared, eyes fever bright, at him for showing up in shambles.
But he thought his appearance made a terrible amount of sense. He’d only glimpsed the McKinley girl once of late. Then she’d been squealing and dancing in the rain. The hood of her neon green rain slicker had been pulled back, leaving her reddish hair plastered to her head as she rushed up and down the sidewalk. Her cheeks had glowed with that sort of joy that never seems quite right in this world. He’d loathed that, privately hoping she’d trip. Rain was for grieving and everyone else knew it.
Except for kids.
With a sighed snort, he dumped the remainder of his acorn caps into the pond, striding away without checking whether they had floated or sunk. After the funeral, maybe he would return. If the rain had diminished some and no one was too forceful in offering him a ride. Yes, he’d come back later and find if any of his small travelers had survived the trip back to shore.
# # #
Melanie M Steger is a queer New Jersey based writer, editor, and adjunct professor. She holds an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from William Paterson University and operates the online literary magazine Floating Acorn Review. Her work can be found in Sky Island Journal and Ranger Magazine.
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Ready or Not…
by Chet Meyer
I HATE EVERYTHING about cocktail parties except the cocktails. So, when
I was invited to a soirée at my ex-wife’s business opening, only the promise of an open bar won me over.
Tracy and I have kept in touch over the years since our amicable divorce, and she includes me in her life, especially when it’s something social that makes her look good.
I closed my office early, leaving a stack of unpaid invoices, and cabbed downtown to the antique area where Tracy was starting an arts and crafts consignment gallery called “The Artisan Partisan.” The shop was long and thin, with a pressed tin ceiling about twenty feet above a polished oak floor. The brick walls were lined with chrome and glass shelves on which the display items glowed in the beams of small black ceiling spotlights. The total effect was quite classy.
I cheek-kissed Tracy a congratulatory greeting. Then, as I pretended to look over the pretentious pottery, weavings and beaded necklaces, I found the small but adequately stocked bar toward the middle of the store.
After a few Scotch and sodas, I found a safe corner back in the office area. There,
I leaned against a file cabinet and watched Tracy’s A-listers mill about the shop chatting one another up. Despite their over-praising of all this neo-Americana as if they were museum pieces, I didn’t see a sale all night.
Unfortunately, I was not insulated enough from the world, because, suddenly, a thin man in a dark three-piece suit appeared next to me. “Mind if I hide from the ‘Madding Crowd’ here with you?” he asked.
I raised my glass in greeting. “Isn’t it ironic when anti-social people group together?” I said. “I’m Tom Rattigan, ex-husband of the new gallery owner. How do you know Tracy?”
“Mutual acquaintances…you know how it goes.”
“Not really. I don’t have many acquaintances.”
“Are you in the arts also?” he asked.
“Not unless caricatures on my desk blotter count. I run the family business, Down the Drain, a plumbing company.”
“Oh. I might have seen your truck.”
“How about you?”
“I help people see better.”
“Ophthalmologist? Just don’t ask me to spell it.”
He looked unsure if I was joking or revealing my stupidity. I drained my glass.
“Want a drink?”
“Thanks, no. I don’t indulge.”
I flagged down a roaming waiter and asked for a double-Dewar’s-rocks delivery.
“I had to be here for Tracy, but what brought you tonight?”
“Curiosity mostly. I see Tracy from time to time.”
“Oh? Is she all right?”
“Nothing unusual, given her age and awareness.”
“That’s good,” I said, not knowing or caring exactly what he meant.
When the waiter returned, I stuffed a crumpled dollar into his hand.
Before my first sip, I sensed something and jerked my head up and off to the right.
“Spasm?”
“No, sorry, I thought I saw something.”
“You probably did. Most often you’re not quick enough. In my field, I meet people all the time who question their vision or think they’re hallucinating. I don’t always tell them the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That it’s FEP.”
“FEP?”
“Fleeting Entity Perception.”
“You mean there really are things there that we don’t…?”
“Perceive? Of course! Unless they want you to. They’re too fast.”
“They?”
“The universe is totally populated, Tom. Beings intrude all over the place, but most don’t want to be caught on this plane of existence. Others dare you to deal with their existence, deliberately staying for confrontation.”
“How do you know this?”
“Research…personal experience.
“Can they harm us in any way?”
“There is a complete spectrum of good to bad, positive to negative, in all of creation. UFOlogists talk about many alien species, some of which are quite malevolent.
“Scary,” I said, slurping at my Scotch. “I see things peripherally all the time, but I never thought they were real.”
“I didn’t say they were real.”
“What do you mean?”
“In no way are these entities, or anything else, REAL, in the way people use that word. Nothing in the material world is ‘real’ per se. Your physical senses are flawed, based on input from material organs. What most people agree on is accepted as truth, the overlap providing the definitions for what is called ‘reality.’ But, I caution you. Admit to seeing FEPs and they’ll probably commit you.”
“But, in your profession…don’t you feel hypocritical?”
“Why? I help people overcome the fallibility of their visual apparatus.”
I drained my glass and looked all around the room with curious expectation.
“Shakes up your ideas about the world, doesn’t it?”
“Blows them away. Why are you telling me this?”
“Human life has periods of readiness. Tonight, you were ready. It’s like when children are hovering between the material world and where they came from before birth. That’s usually when they have what are called imaginary friends…forms of FEPs.”
Just then, I was aware of a shape that had a flimsy but definite form. “I think I just….”
“What did it look like?”
“It was just a quick realization, and….”
“Could you draw it?”
“Yes, I think so…good idea.”
I sat down at Tracy’s desk to find paper and a pencil. I closed my eyes for a moment to recall the image. It seemed as if a second later Tracy was shaking my shoulder.
“Tom, come on, I’ll drive you home.”
“Why? What time is it?”
“Everyone’s left, the caterers have cleaned up and gone.”
“Where’s the guy I was talking to?”
“You came back here as soon as you came in. You only talked to waiters.”
“No, no. I was telling your ophthalmologist what I had just seen and he….”
“I don’t have an ophthalmologist! I didn’t even invite one.”
“Then who was that man with me?”
“Tom, you had an awful lot to drink tonight.”
I looked down at the paper in front of me. On it was a decent freehand drawing of a slender man in a vested suit. “Here, look. This is the guy.”
“Tom, I’m worried about you. You’re acting lost. You have to find someone who can help you get a grip on reality.”
“Tracy, you don’t understand. I just did.”
# # #
Author/playwright Chet Meyer has been aboard The Zodiac Review since our inaugural issue in 2011 as Guest Reviewer. After retiring from his dream career as a high school English teacher, he has written in many genres, including children’s literature. His one-act play, “Semi-Pro Bono” was performed in Fort Pierce, Florida’s Pineapple Playhouse on February 28, 2026. He currently lives in the woods of New York’s Catskill Mountains with Winston, his handsome Dachshund.
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Marvin Waters
by Sascha Zenari
MARVIN, THE MAN who lives upstairs, is made of water.
He is also an artist, his body often flecked with flames of acrylic colour. We share an apartment block with thin walls and ceilings. A family of five are often heard in the stairwell as I pretend to lie asleep with my earplugs in. The father yells at his kids. It is unclear if they deserve it or not. The baby cries. Marvin is always blissfully quiet. It is how I first become aware of him, my attention drawn into the hole his silence opens up.
One night, he pools through my ceiling. At first, he just drips, darkening the plaster. I watch him, his gentle pinging entering my awareness as I lie awake. Then, a faucet opens, and he floods through the ceiling, pooling into a puddle on the floor. A moment passes, and he flows into form. The cold settles in. We observe each other. Then, I pull back the corner of my duvet and let him into my bed. At first, it is an unpleasant sensation, but soon my body heat turns him into a warm bath.
My mother does not approve. The next morning, she arrives without notice at my front door. Marvin has since dissipated. She hands me a towel and tells me to mop up the painted streaks he has left behind on the floor. She has brought over three human-sized silver fish. Their mouths are dead, wide and toothless around chains that disappear into their bellies. The promise of a hook gleams from inside them. These three chains link to a yoke, which my mother has locked shut around her shoulders. She bends at a right angle under the weight. I know better than to offer to help her.
My mother hauls the fish past me, through the kitchen and up onto the dining table. They slip over the plastic-coated wooden surface. She wrangles them, and their metal binds, into flat submission.
"I mean, seriously, what a mess." She is talking about the painted floor she has trudged over. I follow her reluctantly over an iridescent rainbow of colour, since sullied into a muddy brown by the wet fish corpses and my mother's boots.
I reach the dining table. She pushes back past me into the kitchen, slamming stiff wooden drawers open and closed. I half turn my head towards the noise. She returns with my grandfather’s ceremonial sword, which she has liberated from its resting place above the living room mantelpiece. No doubt, she has found my knife collection disappointing.
"Are you going to help me, or just stand there doing nothing?"
I opt for somewhere in between. I position myself at the head of the table, holding the fish skulls steady between each of my hands. I do not flinch as their skin mucus leaks through my fingers. I stare into the emptiness of their deep eyes. My mother does not flinch as she draws the sword through the side of each fish. Nor does she flinch when she flips their nude insides open on top of each other, hacking them into forearm-sized chunks, her own arms flapping with the exertion.
The stench begins to bring the ocean through the dining room. The water that builds up under the table is opaque with salt. Our feet disappear into it. I focus on our amputated shins.
"Then, what you want to do is debone them." I turn my head towards her, my movement in time with her deftly pulling the entire length of the fish's spine out at once. With the momentum, its thin tail flicks past my shoulder, and I flinch away. Sweat on her brow, my mother's wrinkled eyes gleam with joy and humour. I laugh, despite myself.
By the time she is done with all three fish, we are up to our knees in water dotted with flaky, shiny bits. There is a pile of fish chunks on one end of the table.
“You don’t want to do this the rest of your life?” My mother says, wiping her forearm across her face, “You'd better find a good man to do it instead.” My father’s cross swings around her neck as she cleans and gently returns my grandfather’s sword to its resting place. I watch her through the door to the living room as she returns it, then pauses to stare at it a moment. I look away before she can turn to meet my eyes.
At the dining table, under the single ceiling lamp, we eat chunks of raw fish in silence. I am full for days. My feet prune as the water slowly drains from my apartment. A passive-aggressive amount of letters from my landlord pile up under my door and become soggy, sticking to the floor. I am saddened by the silver speckled scales stuck under my fingernails.
I stop feeling like seeing Marvin. He does not seem to want to pay me any more midnight visits. There's a pile of thin white fishbones chest high in the corner of my kitchen, until I eventually gather the motivation to heap them outside my door. They take with them the last of the lingering fish smell. A week passes, and my mother brings me sea urchins the size of cushions. She seems to be becoming increasingly exacerbated by my dour visage.
Then, a few nights later, the roof leak returns. I wait for Marvin to coalesce into something of substance, pretending not to care, but he doesn’t. He remains an obnoxious constant drip. I throw off my bed sheets and storm upstairs to bang on his door. I’m prepared to yell at him, but the words leave me once he opens the door and sloshes back just a step, until I can just see into his living area.
The pile of fishbones from downstairs emerges before me in a crystalline structure, akin to an igloo of snowflakes. Fairy lights from within glitter around cushions on the floor and shine through webbed translucent walls. I step forward unconsciously. His living room has a distinct paint smell. Watercolour and acrylic paintings of the ocean are stacked against every wall. They are painted without clarity, like hazy memories. They somehow make me nostalgic for the sting of the ocean water I hate so much. His floor is uneven with layers and layers of dried paint in every shade.
Marvin wets my arm and leads me forward towards the sculpture in the centre of his furnitureless living room. I duck my head to enter the structure, pluck at the walls’ exposed scaffolding. It holds solid, plinks out the highest note on a violin. I feel a prickling in my throat, like I’ve swallowed a fishbone and it’s stuck horizontally. I find myself slowly lying down against the cushions inside the fort, watching how the fairy lights blink and dance against the mesh ceiling. Marvin eventually melts down into a moat, circling around the cave he created for me. I fall asleep peacefully to his babbling brook.
# # #
Sascha Zenari is a 24 year old fiction writer from Sydney, Australia. She enjoys writing magical realism, often combining elements of the Australian and American landscapes as she spent some of her childhood in Colorado, USA. In her writing she attempts to tease out stories of everyday magic.
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My Wife Doesn’t See Dead People
by David Hensen
Lola’s foot twitches when Dr. Maxwell taps her knee with his little silver hammer. “Everything checks out physically, folks. Let’s try again. Lola, who’s in the room with us?”
“Like I said, Doctor. You and Larry. Oh, and of course, me.” I sigh.
The figure Dr. Maxwell says was his wife sits in the corner, apparently working a crossword. An abstract painting behind the woman gives her a colorful appearance. “Honey, don’t you see something in the corner?” Lola looks around the room then shakes her head and smiles. That same blissful smile.
“Your wife is tranced, Mr. Roberts.” He goes to his own wife and, careful to not pass his hand through her, mimes stroking her hair. The woman keeps her nose in her puzzle.
He turns toward me, “Your wife might come out of it over time.”
“Stop for a pizza on the way home?” Lola says as we wait at the elevator. Before I can answer, a bell dings, and the doors slide. The elevator looks jammed at first glance, but a closer look reveals several of the people are translucent. I step around. Lola strides right through.
I apologize to the living, explaining my wife is tranced. A man’s jaw drops.
“Sometimes I think they’re lucky,” says a woman, wiping her eyes with a tissue.
“I used to think that,” another woman says. She mimes squeezing the hand of the figure standing next to her. He looks at his watch and straightens his tie.
“I feel sorry for that lady,” Lola says when we step off the elevator. “Wonder why she was so sad.”
“Beats me.” I don’t even try to explain anymore.
#
I look around as we munch our pizza. A somewhat transparent couple in the booth across from us appears to be having an argument by the looks of their expressions and gestures. Nothing serious, it appears. If Lola were normal, we might make up a story about why they’re arguing. I hope those days aren’t gone for good.
My wife is missing out on so much, I think, as a ghost mom who corrals her ghost daughter who keeps running up and down the aisle.
When Lola asks why I’m chuckling, I don’t have the heart to tell her about the little spirit boy who’s trying to stuff a whole slice into his mouth. No, wait…just a trick of light. That’s a living boy. Like Johnny. Like Johnny was.
If two officers show up at your door, I told my brother at the funeral, hope it’s for unpaid parking tickets, hope it’s for tax evasion, hope it’s for robbing a bank. Because there are things so much worse.
As we’re finishing our pizza, Johnny bursts into the restaurant. Our son climbs into our booth and jumps up and down between Lola and me. Looking through him, I watch Lola pat her lips with a napkin. “I think this place has the best pizza in town, don’t you, Larry?” she says. “Honey? You look like you’re a million miles away.”
Sometimes I wish.
# # #
David Henson and his wife reside in Illinois. His work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in various publications including Best Microfictions 2025, Ghost Parachute, Moonpark Review, Maudlin House, and Literally Stories, His website is http://writings217.wordpress.com. His X handle is @annalou8.
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Three Words
by A.P. Ritchey
PARTY FAVORS from the future.
It had been a surprising addition to their lives. Something you never knew you’d love.
It started as a hokey joke. On their first anniversary, they buried a “time capsule.” A grandiose name for a Tupperware bowl with a tight-fitting lid. They tucked inside their wedding invitation, a few photos, and a pair of handwritten notes to each other.
A sentimental ritual, nothing more.
But they kept the tradition alive, and over the years the capsule evolved into sturdier containers. The hiding spots wandered across their property. Half the fun was remembering where they’d buried it, performing a little archaeological dig each anniversary.
It became the thing they looked forward to every year, especially the notes.
Words mean the most.
But on their seventh anniversary, the capsule did something unexpected. Among the trinkets they vaguely recalled, they found items they hadn’t placed inside: ticket stubs from a concert that hadn’t happened yet. A wedding invitation from a friend who was definitely single. A newspaper clipping about a minor scandal that hadn’t yet engulfed a neighbor down the street.
In the moment, they were confused, but dutifully placed new items into the capsule and reburied it. And when each event came to pass that year, they decided the capsule was perhaps a sign that their ritual was meaningful. That they were meaningful. They felt chosen. Blessed. And when objects from the future continued to arrive each year, the capsule became a comforting tether between now and whatever came next.
So, they kept burying it.
And every year it failed to be wrong about the future.
* * *
On their tenth anniversary, under a bright fall sun, they unearthed the capsule and carried it to the patio table. Brushed dirt away.
“Ready?” he asked. She nodded with an expectant smile. He pushed the capsule across to her. “It’s your year.”
“Gladly,” she said, twisting open the metal endcap. Peeking inside. A look crossed her face. She carefully tipped the container up. A single sheet of paper fell to the table.
On it were three words.
Typed.
Please forgive me.
They stared, waiting for meaning to emerge. Waiting for the joke to land. But the message remained opaque. A cold breeze fluttered the edges.
“Forgive you?” she said. “For what?”
“Me? I didn’t write it.”
“Well, neither did I.”
He lifted the note carefully, like is was poisonous. The paper was thick. The kind made for typewriters.
“Do you still have your dad’s old typewriter?” he asked, a bit aggressively.
She shot him a look. “You know that I don’t.”
“Why would you write this and not say what it’s about?”
“I didn’t fucking write it, okay?”
* * *
They moved indoors. The questions grew sharper.
“Please just tell me, what exactly are you up to?”
“Me? That note could just as easily have been yours. What are you doing when I’m at work, anyway?”
“When you’re at—,” he spun on her. “What the hell are you implying— Cheating? Drugs? Why would you even—”
“Because the damn thing has never been wrong. Someone wrote that letter.”
\He snatched the page from her hands, turned it over, searching for some explanation.
“Well, it must have been you because it sure as hell wasn’t me.”
That night, they lay in bed facing opposite directions, the note downstairs in the trash and the empty space between them colder than the autumn air outside.
* * *
Morning came gray. She found him in the kitchen lowering the capsule into the trash can. She shook her head.
“No. We’ll re-bury it,” she said with an edge of defiance. “Same place. Same rules as always.”
He looked up at her, jaw set. “This isn’t fun or cute anymore.”
“We’ve never broken the chain,” she said. “Not once.”
He set it on the floor next to the trashcan instead and after a silent breakfast, he acquiesced and they walked outside and lowered the capsule back into the ground. Covered it. Stomped the earth flat.
“It’ll still be here in a year,” she murmured.
“But will we?” he said, already walking away.
They had booked their favorite cabin months ago— another annual ritual. Neither wanted to go now, but neither wanted to be the one to cancel. That would be, in its own way, an admission.
So, they went.
The highway looked strangely drab, washed-out, even with the sun shining in a flawless blue sky. The late-autumn trees felt deader than they should— as if summer had been skipped. A season missing.
Once the miles had softened them, she finally spoke.
“I keep having these awful thoughts,” she said. “Like you’re cheating. Or, God forbid, it’s a suicide note.”
He gripped the wheel harder. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I’m scared. It’s never been wrong. One of us will do something that needs forgiveness.”
He flipped on the blinker for the mountain exit.
“What I hate is that this is how we’re handling it,” he said. “Silence or yelling.”
* * *
The cabin was the same every year. Same stone fireplace, same creaky floorboards, same vintage curios collected or abandoned over the decades— mismatched fishing rods, antique lanterns, boardgames with missing dice. Usually it felt like stepping inside nostalgia. Tonight it felt like a waiting room.
After another dinner passed in silence, she called to him from the bedroom. He found her standing before the open closet, hands on hips. She looked at him, pointed to something high on a shelf. He stepped around to see.
An old typewriter.
Another of the cabin’s random leftovers.
She wrapped her hands around his arm. Leaned against his shoulder.
Neither spoke. They didn’t need to.
Carefully, he lifted the typewriter down.
Found some paper on the same shelf.
They sat together, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the floor in the orange light of the fireplace. The typewriter on the low coffee table.
They rolled in a sheet.
Together— tentatively, taking turns, hen-pecking one letter at a time— they typed three words.
# # #
A.P. Ritchey is kind of all over the place -- speculative fiction, science reporting, even some poetry. He has written for numerous periodicals, with short fiction appearing in Rat Bag Lit, SciFi Shorts, Typishly, and the Esthetic Apostle, among others. He writes from Fayetteville, Arkansas.
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Metaphor
by Alan Zaremba
I OFTEN CONSIDER life events as metaphors. When at the beginning of January I became ill, I saw the sickness as an indication that the new year would be grim. A physician downplayed the illness and told me what to do to recover. I followed the advice and became healthier almost immediately. The incident suggested personal resilience. Whatever bumps I might encounter, I could endure.
In early February I decided to, finally, pick up the several pairs of sneakers in our mudroom. I gathered the shoes and walked up the stairs to place them where they belonged. At the top of the staircase I lost my balance, tumbled backwards, and rammed into the metal at the base that supports the banister. What did my falling say about my life? An orthopedist informed me that while activity would be restricted for weeks, I would recover. It wasn’t even the end of February. First the sickness, and then, like a cartoon character, tumbling comically.
In March I had to hustle to make a train. There’s a station less than a mile from my home. I arrived in time, only to see an electronic sign near the stop indicating that the train would be late. It was a bitterly cold and windy day. Was this another metaphor? Was I rushing in life here and there, for no good reason. Once on the train I spotted Barry, a co-worker. I thought he might be attending the same event. Barry was a kind decent man who was, unfortunately, often malodorous. Barry waved and pointed to the vacant seat next to him. It would have been rude to sit elsewhere so we sat together for the thirty-minute ride to our destination. He was, as is typical, ripe. Along our journeys, we are compelled to tolerate what is foul.
“Too bad about Maury.” said Barry
I nodded. Maury, a mutual colleague, had died suddenly. It was to the wake that we were both headed. Maury was, like Barry, a good person. Kind and insightful. We arrived at the funeral home. There was Maury, laid out. His family stood near the open casket. I walked up to Maury and spent a moment looking at my former colleague.
Maury stared back as only the dead can. And then I heard him speak leaving a message I should not forget.
“Hey”, said Maury. “Forget the metaphors. So you were sick. And you fell down the stairs. And the train was late. And you had to sit next to Barry. I’m dead. You’re alive. I can’t freeze my ass off waiting for trains, or tumble downstairs. No choices left for me. You, you’ve got a pulse. No metaphors, my friend. Life. Live.” he screamed at me.
Okay. Maury.
# # #
I live in a suburb of Boston and work at Northeastern University. I’ve won four awards for excellence in teaching. Recently I started writing short fiction pieces. A story, “Geezers,” won an award sponsored by a publication. A ten-minute play, “A Pair of Jacks,” was selected to be read in a play writing workshop. Another flash fiction story was accepted, but subsequently I received a notice that the publication was going out of business.
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Signs
by Stefan Sofiski
ENTRÉES ARRIVED, the waitress asking who had what. My brain froze, I swallowed my tongue.
“Your profile says you hate asparagus,” Sarah said.
“Oh… yes, pâté for me, please,” I muttered, radiating the restaurant with one of my signature constipated smiles which I quickly retracted and looked down at my plate.
“I love asparagus. Guess opposites attract, right?”
I murmured “mhm”, which came out as “ham-ham.”
She chuckled. Her cheeks rosied. Was she feeling hot?
I shoved a pâté cracker in my mouth, so I wouldn’t have to speak. Crunchy bits scratched the roof of my mouth. Focus on chewing!
“You must be hungry.”
Sarah’s was fluttered over her wet, hazel eyes. Had mascara gotten into them so she had to blink so much?
I did eventually have to speak. I managed the date alright without hiccups. I often hiccup on dates and have to drink two glasses of water to stop and then pee three times.
Sarah put her hand under my arm on the way to her stop. The tram screeched beside us, and just before getting in she gave me a lipsticky kiss on the cheek. Was this a polite way to get away quickly?
I would know once she logged into the Signs dating app and swiped me a sign — Cupid’s arrow for another date. Or, I feared, Venus’ mirror for staying single.
I reached into my coat for my phone but my fingers grazed something else. Something warm, wet, as big as a fist. She must’ve slipped it in. My chest imploded when I took it out.
In my hand — slimy, pumping, was a heart... She’d given me her heart! Small drops of blood dripped from the severed artery and plocked on my shoes.
Was this a sign Sarah liked me? I looked up — she watched me from the back window as the tram disappeared behind a bend.
I transferred her heart to my other hand, wiped the blood off my coat and reached for my phone. Please, let it be Cupid!
# # #
Stefan Sofiski is the pen name of a double miscast in the literary community: a left-brain structural engineer writing fiction, and a Bulgarian doing it in English. He holds a PhD in engineering and a Pushcart nomination in writing. He juggles these two worlds, often embarrassing himself in both. Stefan works in two intertwining registers: literary fiction (Unbroken Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Tint Journal) and thriller/noir (Shotgun Honey, Close to the Bone, Thriller Magazine).
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End of Spring 2026 stories
